Ready to counter Modi, will use social media: Yogendra Yadav

As the Aam Aadmi Party gears up for its debut at the Lok Sabha elections later this year, it appears that the party is preparing to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in a big way. AAP’s senior leader Yogendra Yadav has said in an interview to the Times of India, that the party will directly attack Modi and the BJP. “We have decided to take on the BJP and Modi frontally,” Yadav is quoted as having said. He also said that the party will make effective use of social media platforms against Modi, although he did not specify how. [caption id=“attachment_1106707” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Yogendra Yadav in this file photo. PTI[/caption] He added, “We will raise these issues and go to the streets demanding answers. Modi is after all seeking to be PM of India so the questions will have to be raised everywhere across India.” And what exactly are the issue that AAP plans to target Modi on? Corruption and criminality, says Yadav. He told TOI, “How come Modi continues to have in his cabinet ministers who have been convicted?… How come Amit Shah continues to be Modi’s closest lieutenant…?” In addition to this, Yadav said that the party plans to question Modi’s relationship with the Adani group as well. Yadav doesn’t spell out exactly how the AAP plans to target Modi, but that the year-old party will use social media to train their guns on Modi , a space where Modi is particularly strong, is telling. As far as Indian politicians go, Modi has the most number of followers on Twitter, and his fans tend to come out rather aggressively whenever there is a challenge to Modi. AAP, for its part, has used social media equally effectively in the run-up to its Delhi Assembly victory.  Ankit Lal, who handles social media and information technology strategy for AAP, told _Firstpost_ in an earlier interview  that the party is fairly confident about its growth on the platform. “BJP can only dream about the kind of engagement we have, but can’t achieve it,” is what Lal had said. Proof of this is seen in the fact that just one day before the Delhi elections, #AAPSweepingDelhi, and #Vote4AamAadmiParty were consistently trending on top of Twitter. Ever since the election win, AAP has managed to grab the spotlight on the social media platform and has also gained increasing media coverage both in print and on television. Almost any AAP press conference is now expected to be shown live on television. But whether attention from social media and the mainstream media will be enough to help AAP counter Modi and BJP remains to be seen. You can read the full TOI interview here.