The 2020 Bihar Assembly Elections will be the first Indian state to hold election campaigns and rallies virtually. In this episode, JD(U) is set to launch an exclusive digital platform, JDUlive.com, keeping in mind the limited scope for campaigning on the ground in the view of the coronavirus pandemic outbreak and the detailed new guidelines issued by the election commission of India.
According to a report in Hindustan Times, the party insiders claimed that the newly developed election oriented digital platform is one of its kind and will be launched by the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in a virtual meeting next month.
“We planned this with the help of a group of IITians from Bihar to utilise the lockdown period, as there was a clear indication that campaigning this time won’t be the same as before due to the pandemic. JDUlive.com will redefine the mode of communication with the masses in the digital era,” said a senior party leader, pleading anonymity.
“The platform’s current integral on-boarding capacity is one lakh, live viewers, for a digital /virtual public rally. This can be expanded up to 10 lakh (one million) participants for any given live interaction in the future,” said the leader, adding the global lockdown necessitated out-of-the-box solutions for public campaigning.
According to the report, the platform will allow to engage not just with party cadres but also with the general public. In this context, a Live.tv menu on the portal is to enable any person to share any positive video or news item which, upon approval by the portal’s administrator, can get posted online. This will provide a single point source of positive news to the media as well.
“Platforms like Zoom, Google meet, etc, have gained huge popularity as the preferred modes for organising public meets, but being third party service providers, there are obvious limitations on using them,” said party leaders.
“On the JDULive.com website, both party functionaries and people can put their views, such as through the ‘Virtual Survekshan’ (survey) menu designed for Digital Survey,” said those handling the digital set up.
The platform can only be accessed by the party functionaries from the state and district levels for uploading and managing data and information relating to their respective jurisdictions.
