As it gears up for the general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party is set to make use of E-networking to tone up the party for maximum benefits.
Soon, the party will launch a network linking more than 1,000 party offices across the country, which will include facilities like computer-based faxing and instant messaging.
More than 30 lakh partymen are to be given official e-mail addresses and each cadre would be able to approach party president Rajnath Singh via video-conferencing.
The party has established an IT cell headed by an IIM graduate, which is racing against time to install a state-of-the-art technology platform for the party, ahead of the election year.
The initiative is planned to be unveiled during the party's National Executive and Council later this month.
"Any organisation must keep pace with the latest advancements to make the maximum utilisation of resources available," said spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
"Though technology can never substitute human endeavours, it can always supplement it and organise it for maximum results," he added.
The party's plan is also to substantially cut down on the telephone bills and switch on to the day-to-day communication on a dedicated bandwidth purchased by the saffron brigade.
"The whole project is cost effective as we have employed the free linux based software," said Prodyut Bora, head of the IT cell.
One of the targets of the party is to make available the instructions from the party headquarters to the grass-root level worker in real time.
"One revolutionary initiative for any party in India would the unified-messaging system. By this a communication could reach the worker wherever he is. An email could be heard via voice mail in his mobile and a voice reply can reach the concerned as a fax-message," Bora added.
The IT plans also involve installation of about 100 caching servers in different parts of the country, from the hilly terrain of Kashmir to the peninsular south, to boost connectivity and content distribution of the 36 official websites of the party.
"The caching servers to be hosted in far-flung areas will be connected to the central servers in Delhi and hence WWW would cease to be World Wide Wait for the partymen," he adds.
So with official email IDs and instant messaging facilities on their phones and video-conferencing becoming a real time daily affair, those days are not far when a BJP leader will send in a SMS to resign or bang the phone on video conferencing to walk out of the meeting, a fact which no party leader is today ready to comment on.
