With around 46 per cent voters falling in the category of youth in Himachal Pradesh, both Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are battling out on the social media to woo this section of the electorate.

The war on social media platforms has kept the leaders of both the parties busy as allegations and counter-allegations keep flooding the space almost every day. The social media teams of both the parties are uploading videos on social media platforms to target each other on poll issues. Though there have been instances where defamatory content with personal attacks is also appearing on the cyberspace.

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While the BJP is targeting the Congress government on government’s failure in five years rule, Congress has been targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi government on Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation.

In addition, the BJP has started a video campaign against Congress MLAs and ministers under its ‘Hisaab Mange Himachal’ wherein the party has highlighted their failures in developing constituencies.

To counter the Opposition party’s campaign, Congress has started ‘Jawab Dega Himachal’ campaign.The state BJP spokesperson Mahender Dharmani said the party has a dedicated team of volunteers till booth level who are engaged in the work of spreading messages through social media platforms.

“We are focusing on failures of Congress government rule in the last five years which includes mafia raj, poor condition of roads and widespread corruption,” he said, adding the achievements of Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government are also being highlighted.

A team of experts from Delhi has been engaged by the party to design posts, videos for Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media platforms.

The state Congress spokesperson Devender Bushahari said their party’s campaign is focused on highlighting the achievements of the government as almost all the promises made in the election manifesto has been fulfilled.

“Besides, we are focusing on exposing the lies of the Modi government. During the previous Congress-led UPA government rule, BJP leaders including PM Modi has vociferously protested against price-rise. But now all the party leaders are silent on the issue, despite a steep hike in the prices of petroleum products and other essential items,” he said.

It is worthwhile to mention here that around 29.5 per cent voters in the state are in the age group of below 29-years while overall 46 per cent voters are below 39 years age group.

As many as 40,567 youths out of more than 2 lakh new voters will exercise their franchise for the first time in 9 November assembly elections.