Digitally challenged CMs

BY NANDITA JHA| IN Digital Media | 03/10/2015
Half the country’s CMs have no truck with websites, blogs or Twitter.
NANDITA JHA looks at who uses these tools actively and who doesn’t

Digital media savvy chief ministers. Clockwise: N Chandrababu Naidu, Vasundhara Raje, Arvind Kejriwal, Anandiben Patel

 

If the leadership for making Digital India a reality has to come from the political class  and if India lives in its states, how convinced are our regional political leaders  about the usefulness of Internet outreach and social media? 

If their personal use of  it is in any indication, the answer is not very. Roughly fifty per cent of our chief ministers are managing without using these tools of communication themselves. Out of 29 states,  the CMs of 14 have neither  a personal website nor  a blog, nor are they on Twitter.  These include the CMs of all four southern states!

Among the more formidable women CMs, neither  Jayalalitha nor Mamata Banerjee have any use for these tools, but Anandiben Patel, on the other hand, is a dab hand at digital communication. She uses all three and, unlike most Indian politicians who prefer to tweet rather than blog, she actually manages to post on her blog every month.

The following CMs do not use the Internet or social media to reach out to people:

Laxmikant Parsekar

Goa

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed

Jammu and Kashmir

Raghuvar Das

Jharkhand

Siddaramaiah

Karnataka

Oommen Chandy

Kerala

Okram Ibobi Singh

Manipur

Mukul Sangma

Mizoram

T. R. Zeliang

Nagaland

Parkash Singh Badal

Punjab

K. Chandrashekar Rao

Telangana

Jayalalitha

Tamil Nadu

Manik Sarkar

Tripura

Harish Rawat

Uttarakhand

Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal

 

A few like Akhilesh Yadav, Manohar Lal Khattar, Virbhadra Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, prefer to just tweet. Naveen Patnaik, who also has a website, became active on Twitter only last month.

 

Twitter only

Manohar Lal Khattar

Haryana

@mlkhattar

Virbhadra Singh

Himachal Pradesh

@virbhadrasingh

Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Madhya Pradesh

@ChouhanShivraj

Akhilesh Yadav

Uttar Pradesh

@yadavakhilesh

 

This is why Patnaik figures at the bottom of the active-on-Twitter list. Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party is the most active followed by Devendra Fadnavis, CM of Maharashtra and other BJP CMs who dominate the list. The exception is the Congress CM of Arunachal Pradesh, Nabam Tuki who is the fifth most active CM on Twitter.

 

Those on Twitter in order of activeness with their Twitter handle and total no. of tweets are:

Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi

@ArvindKejriwal

8,950

Devendra Fadnavis

Maharashtra

@Dev_Fadnavis

6,564

Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Madhya Pradesh

@ChouhanShivraj

4,847

Anandiben Patel

Gujarat

@anandibenpatel

3,297

NabamTuki

Arunachal Pradesh

@NabamtukiCM

2,859

Raman Singh        

Chhattisgarh

@drramansingh

2,614

Vasundhara Raje

Rajasthan

@VasundharaBJP

1,881

Virbhadra Singh

Himachal Pradesh

@virbhadrasingh

1,832

Manohar Lal Khattar

Haryana

@mlkhattar

1,733

N Chandrababu Naidu

Andhra Pradesh

@ncbn

1,079

Nitish Kumar

Bihar

@NitishKumar

680

Akhilesh Yadav

Uttar Pradesh

@yadavakhilesh

388

Naveen Patnaik

Odisha

@Naveen_Odisha

35

 

Only three chief ministers blog frequently - Chandrababu Naidu, Anandiben Patel and Vasundhara Raje.

 

Those with a website, blog and twitter

N Chandrababu Naidu

Andhra Pradesh

http://chandrababunaidu.com/

@ncbn

http://chandrababunaidu.com/blog/ , writes every week 

Anandiben Patel

Gujarat

http://anandibenpatel.com/ 

@anandibenpatel

http://anandibenpatel.com/category/blog/, once or twice a month

Vasundhara Raje

Rajasthan

http://www.vasundhararaje.in/en/

@VasundharaBJP

http://www.vasundhararaje.in/en/category/blog, frequent writer

 

And what of other state politicians – opposition  leaders? Mayawati stands out for having no truck with Twitter or other internet platforms. Derek O’Brien is an avid  tweeter, and M.K. Stalin has a fairly snazzy website. Omar Abdullah tweets diligently, as does Lalu Prasad Yadav.

 

State-level politicians on the web

Politician

State/ Party

Website

Twitter

Blog

Derek O’Brien

Trinamool Congress, Kolkata

http://www.derek.in/index.aspx

@quizderek

http://quizderek.blogspot.in/

M.K Stalin

DMK, Tamil Nadu

http://mkstalin.in/

@mkstalin

No blog

Lalu Prasad Yadav

RJD, Bihar

No website

@laluprasadrjd

No blog

Mayawati

BSP, UP

No website

No verified account

No blog

Omar Abdullah

Jammu and Kashmir National Conference

No website

@abdullah_omar

No blog

 

CMs with a website plus Twitter accounts

NabamTuki

Arunachal Pradesh

http://nabamtuki.org/

@NabamtukiCM

Raman Singh        

Chhattisgarh

http://www.drramansingh.in/

@drramansingh, Joined in sept 2011 but active from April 2015

Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi

http://arvindkejriwal.co.in/

@ArvindKejriwal

Devendra Fadnavis

Maharashtra

http://www.devendrafadnavis.in/index.php?home

@Dev_Fadnavis

Naveen Patnaik

Odisha

http://www.naveenpatnaik.com/

@Naveen_Odisha , active on twitter form sept 9, 2015

 

Twitter Plus blog

Nitish Kumar

Bihar

@NitishKumar, joined in 2010, but active from june this year

http://nitishspeaks.blogspot.in/

 

Only Website

Tarun Gogoi

Assam

http://tarungogoi.in/index.php

Pawan Chamling

Sikkim

http://pawan-chamling.org/

 

 

The Hoot is the only not-for-profit initiative in India which does independent media monitoring.
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