BJP revamps its cyber team to take on Cong

With the Congress catching up on the social media that was otherwise the BJP's forte in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Bhartiya Janata Party has revamped its social media team to launch a new cyber warfare with the help of its foot soldiers becoming active in every district.

In a recent meeting attended among others by BJP President Amit Shah, general secretary Ram Madhav and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the party's IT cell presented a new strategy of projecting the government policies and programmes on the social media like Facebook, Twitters and WhatsApp as well as on blog and video advertisements and at the same time countering the negative propaganda of the Congress with facts and figures.

The leaders were told that the IT cell has engaged experts to re-assess the fast evolving "likes" and "dislikes" of the voters as reflected in the social media conversations and exchanges to provide inputs to the leadership for framing its strategy in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The IT cell is also training a new team of young persons who can devote four to six hours on the social media to project the Modi government's achievements and enter into debate with those trying to find faults with the government schemes and programmes.

The party sources said the meeting, which was also attended by PMO officer-onspecial duty (OSD) Hiren Joshi and Arvind Gupta, who heads MyGov website, laid focus on polishing the party's image in the social media space with nuanced messages and advertisements by encouraging the BJP members to be more active in the cyber warfare.