India's Political Parties Embrace Social Media With Gusto

He said Modi has been using Twitter for more than three years now with the sole intention of communicating with the citizens. He has 3,078,832 followers on the site.

In comparison, Congress leaders' presence on Twitter is seldom felt except for Shashi Tharoor who has been a kind of pioneer among Indian politicians in this media and even got into trouble over it when others had not realised its power and reach. Other Congress leaders regular on Twitter are Hooda, Manish Tewari, Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh and Kapil Sibal.

Another party which has a strong presence in the social media is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose Arvind Kejriwal became Delhi's chief minister. Kejriwal has over 900,000 followers on Twitter.

The AAP, founded only a year ago, also has an interactive web site with a provision for online donations.

AAP spokesperson Aswathi Muralidharan told IANS: "Social media is one of the most important tools in our election campaign."

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