Facebook to feel electors’ pulse in Kashi

A team of social networking website to interact with people on key issues

VARANASI: A 10-member team of the social networking website Facebook will be in Varanasi on April 18 to conduct its famous citizens’ townhall session with people of the temple town from where BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi is contesting Lok Sabha poll.

The team led by renowned journalist Madhu Trehan, who has a tie-up with the site, will interact with locals to know the issues which the electorate of Varanasi want to be addressed their by representative in Parliament. Varanasi goes to poll on May 12.

After Varanasi, the team would be travelling to Vadodara on April 23 to interact with locals there. Varanasi and Vadodara are the two constituencies from where Modi has entered the electoral fray.

Special Facebook groups are also likely to be created for these places so that Facebook users of the two places could register their questions. The social networking site is also providing a unique opportunity to its users to be a party of the big election debate by asking country’s politicians questions. The first session of Facebook talk live was conducted on March 3 in which BJP’s Narendra Modi was to participate but he refused at the last moment.

The Facebook live townhall session is inspired by US President Barack Obama’s ‘Facebook Live’ session in 2011 when he contested for the US presidency the first time. During interaction with locals, the team members would solicit information about major problems they face and issues they would like to be addressed.

Apart from local issues, the team would also try to seek locals’ opinion about candidates contesting from high profile Varanasi seat. Besides BJP candidate Narendra Modi and AAP nominee Arvind Kejriwal, candidates of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress candidates would also be the focal point of the townhall meeting. Based on the feedback from locals, popularity graph of candidates would be posted on Facebook’s election tracker section. Before arriving in Varanasi, the Facebook team would travel to Amritsar on April 11.