Social media: New political arsenal in the hands of J&K mainstream politicians
SRINAGAR: On January 3, Jammu and Kashmir’s two former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti scathingly attacked each other on social media after the latter visited the family of a militant in south Kashmir.
Abdullah accused Mufti of using the dead militants to rehabilitate her “badly damaged reputation” while Mufti in-turn blamed the NC vice president of failing as an opposition leader to reach out to these families.
The bitter exchange between the two leaders took another dimension when the duo was targeted by another ‘emerging’ leader of Kashmir and People’s Conference chairman Sajad Lone who stated that the two dynasties were “enacting theatre”.
In the restive state where leaders
have to seek security clearance before visiting any place or hold a public gathering in any city, town or rural village due to militant presence, social media is certainly emerging as the new stage especially when assembly elections are round the corner.
Top state politicians are resorting to social media to reach out to masses whom they cannot meet on the ground frequently. While Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah both are regular on social media, especially Twitter,
they were recently joined by Lone, as the tool becomes a potent political arsenal among them.
With 3.02 million followers, Omar , who is the most tech savvy politician of the state, joined the social networking site in 2010.
“Omar sahib is very fond of twitter and speaks his mind on local, national and international issues on the site,’’ says one of his close associates. Tanvir Sadiq, political advisor to Omar Abdullah, says the medium helps them connect with the youth in a better manner, “Youngsters are finding this medium quite easy and helpful. NC was the first party in the state to start using social media as a medium to put across its viewpoint. Our party has maximum numbers of its members on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Our media cell looks after party accounts.” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti was a late entrant and joined twitter in 2014 soon after PDP emerged as the single largest party in J&K assembly.
However, the leader became active when she took over as first woman chief minister of the state. With over 1.3 lakh followers, Mufti became more active on social media after BJP withdrew support from her government.
“Though PDP has a dedicated team to look after social media affairs and networks, Mehboobaji operates the account herself,” says PDP youth president Waheed ur Rehman Parra.