Ministers shy of social media

Politicians from AP and Telangana are not net savvy. In fact you can count on your fingers the number of politicians who are active on the social media.

While ministers are accountable to the people when a concern related to their department is raised on social media, all concerns starting from bad road to drain water issue to financial assistance for someone’s health, almost all the requests are directed to the IT minister. Most of the ministers seem to be unwilling to listen on Twitter. Often, ministers posts pictures related to the events they attended on a particular day. This is the case with the CMOs of both the states. This uploading is handled by a team.

Telangana minister for irrigation, marketing and legislative affairs T. Harish Rao’s twitter profile is one such example, which gets updated religiously, but fails to connect with the people.

Likewise, AP HRD minister Ganta Srinivas Rao’s profile comes under this category. On the other hand, there are several ministers who neither articulate the government’s vision nor try to connect with people. Their social media accounts are used to convey wishes to people.

Telangana panchayat raj minister Jupally Krishna Rao which is not a verified handle, has been wishing people on several occasions. However, when a colleague minister tags them, they try to respond back immediately. Consequently, the ministers who are active are turning into complaint boxes online.

While minister K.T. Rama Rao is active on twitter from Telangana, ministers Nara Lokesh and Bhuma Akhila Priya from AP respond to the requests of people.

Considering the flood of requests, both IT ministers have teams to redirect the issues to the concerned department.

An official from Mr KTR’s office said, “The digital teams of officials go through most of the requests that the minister gets and tracks them. Sometimes, a set of disturbing tweets like a person’s life is in danger are also looked at by his team even if the minister doesn’t reply to them”.

On the other hand, minister Lokesh has his tweet pinned, “If you have grievances under Panchayat Raj/Water, mention details of your village/mandal/contact no. with hashtags like #APWater #APRoads”.