Twitter, Facebook, GTalk for Mumbai Voters Help

As Maharashtra went for Assembly polls on October 13, Mumbai City
Collectorate officials were bracing new tech mediums to make sure they reach out
to voters in the best possible way. Sanjay Bhagwat, deputy district collector
and election officer, initiated the tech-savvy move in the city.

Officials in Mumbai City Collectorate are used Twitter, posting website
links: twitter.com/mumbaielection.com so that voters can get election related
informationright from registering in voters list, finding the nearest voter
registration office to getting voters photo identity cards and so forth. In
addition, one can get all election-related latest news and events.

This move does not end just on Twitter, but the Collectorate introduced a
Facebook group also named I want a voters card. This group page on the social
networking site is meant for educating young or first-time voters and help them
do online registration with the election department.

Moreover, understanding the power and usefulness of chat applications such as
GTalk, officials also created an online IDdeo87mumbaicity@gmail.com to offer
instant election-related help and to solve queries via chatting.

While the department had planned and launched the website mumbaicityelection.orgabout
two months back as per the government formats and norms, it was more keen to
enhance its outreach to public and its mode of communication.

Akashi Yashraj, a young commerce graduate with experience in brand building
and promotion, has worked with the department in creating Facebook group and
Twitter link campaigns.

The Facebook group and Twitter links for the portal was done just two weeks
back. The Facebook group had received large amount of election related queries
from users and about 60% queries were also solved. Among them, 30% queries are
from Mumbai and rest are from outside, says Yashraj.

According to Yashraj, the reachout of Twitter is more and growing as it is
mostly used for personal and not commercial purpose. Hence, apart from large
outdoor hoarding and advertisements, Twitter helps to reach out in a better way
and is followed by many users, he says.

Interestingly, he pointed out that today celebrities, politicians and
journalists are among top followers of Twitter. Its difficult for media to
cover each and every election related news, hence Twitter can provide all the
election news update in 140 characters.

In the last few weeks, Twitter has suddenly become the hot topic of
discussion across the nation for wrong reasons due to the cattle class tweet
of Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs. But the latest move
of Mumbais Collectorate in using Twitter and social network sites, does set an
example on using technology in the right way and in the interest of people;
without creating controversy.

So do you think, government bodies should log on to such networking
applications to reach out to people?

Pankaj Maru/ CMN

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