Cyber war breaks out ahead of Gujarat elections

The Gujarat polls are still eight months away. But the cyber space has already become a battlefield between the supporters of the tech-savvy Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, and his opponents.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs, e-mails, Web sites, video uploading sites and every possible avenue on the Internet is being used to attract the attention of the net-savvy, especially youths, towards Mr Modi.

His opponents, chiefly the Congress, which calls him an ‘internet manipulator' is not lagging behind this time in trying to match him on every step in the cyber space.

Also, some NGOs opposed to Mr Modi, have also been very active on the Internet in the campaign against him.

The latest flash point between the two sides was the ‘Time' magazine online poll to select 100 most influential people list. Mr Modi after being interviewed by the magazine was nominated for the top 100 and his name was put up for voting.

He was leading the positive votes for the first few days, and then his opponents swung into action and polled most negative votes. He is still at third position with 2,56,792 positive votes but his negative numbers are higher with 2,66,684 votes. The final results will be announced by the Time magazine on April 17.

“What the supports of the Chief Minister were doing was just a manipulation of internet to make him repositioned as one of the top influential leader of year. This was not a natural vote as we know that his supporters were manipulating it. So his opponents have voted against him as they have come to know reality of things in Gujarat,” the Congress spokesperson, Mr Manish Doshi, said.

Speaking on the Congress' preparedness to counter Mr Modi in cyber space Mr Doshi said, “We have made functional an IT cell which works from morning 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in night from the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee office after our new president Mr Arjun Modhwaida took charge. Their work is just to counter the propaganda of the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, on the cyber space,” Mr Doshi said.

The IT cell which is being monitored by the State Congress president, Mr Arjun Modhvaida, has been asked to make maximum use of social networking sites, upload leaders' speeches on YouTube, e-mail negative stories on Mr Modi and the BJP to large section of population, Mr Doshi added.

“We have recently re-launched Gujarat Congress Web site highlighting negative points of 10 years of misrule by Mr Modi.

We have also set up district unit IT cells to counter the propaganda of Mr Modi at the district level,” he further said.

Though the Congress has started doing all these things just recently, Mr Modi's cyber army has been doing such things from the last many years. Mr Modi himself has a huge presence on the Internet by way of his Web sites, , Twitter account and blog.

He has thousands of followers on his sites.

“Recently, Mr Modi got his Web site narendramodi.in revamped keeping in mind the upcoming elections. Now the Web site is more vibrant,” a BJP party leader said.

“State BJP has also decided to widely use the internet via e-mail, Wen sites, and blogs to reach out to the youth in the run up to the State elections,” BJP's chief spokesperson of Gujarat, Mr Jagdish Bhavsar, said.

“We recently held a meeting of our IT cell and have chalked out a detailed plan on how to carry out the cyber campaign for the upcoming elections. The party's IT campaign will be different from what is being already done by those supporting Mr Modi,” Mr Bhavsar said.

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