Hyderabad: Political parties are trying to swing the tide by involving the tech savvy voter base with their e-manifestos. The forthcoming elections are probably the first one for which regional parties have put up their draft election manifestos online, inviting suggestions from the electorate.
The Telugu Desam Party has created a standalone website and has uploaded its draft election manifesto asking for suggestions. The party claims to have already received more than 10,000 suggestions on the website.
K. Laxmi Narayana, convenor of the TDP Manifesto Committee, said, “We received about 10,000 suggestions online for our manifesto till about a day ago. We have received feedback on various issues concerning governance and all of that will be incorporated in the final manifesto.” He also said that the forthcoming general elections would be the first for e-manifestos.
More parties are going online to shape their final manifestos with even the Telangana PCC and the TRS inviting suggestions over emails. Decisions were separately taken on Friday and Telangana PCC Election Manifesto chairman D. Sridhar Babu said a website would be started soon to invite public suggestions.
TRS also has taken a decision on similar lines with a dedicated email address for people to send in their suggestions. Meanwhile, YSR Congress leader M.V. Mysoora Reddy was not too impressed with the concept of e-manifestos. He said that election manifestos addressing problems being faced by people on the ground could not be prepared by taking online suggestions. “It is not a novel concept. Andhra Pradesh, or now the two divided states, is mainly rural and an overwhelming majority doesn’t have access to internet. They can’t convey their problems online,” he said.
The YSR Congress, however, has started an online community for discussions related to former chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s welfare schemes to apparently draw the debate to their side.Almost all major political parties have a significant social media presence with the YSR Congress on Thursday claiming that it had received the largest number of “likes” on Facebook.
The TDP seems to be a close second in the state on Facebook in terms of the number of “likes”. TDP’s Laxmi Narayana added that the party was consulting people in rural areas as well regarding suggestions and their problems.
