Buddhadeb takes campaign online

Desperate to reach out to millions of voters ahead of the most challenging Assembly election, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is also relying on the virtual world.

A new website (www.buddhadebbhattacharjee.net [1]) gives access to people to ask questions directly to the Chief Minister who will answer those queries. Last week, Mr Bhattacharjee had to face some really tough questions during an interaction with a group of college students in his Jadavpur constituency. But he handled them dexterously. Now he is open to questions from a much wider population through this portal.
On top of the website is a picture of the Chief Minister addressing a massive rally at the Brigade Parade Ground with a scrawler which says. “Towards the 8th Left Front government.”
In the section ‘Vision and Mission’ one finds Mr Bhattacharjee’s priorities including protection of marginalised section, guarantee of food security and education and job for the youth.
His profile reveals that he is a writer and a poet with published works on Jibananda and Manik Bandopadhyay. He has written a play based on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and has translated Gabriel Garcia Marquez into Bengali. Some of his important writings and speeches also find place on the website.
The website also enlists the achievements of the Left Front government in the past three decades as well as Mr Bhattacharjee’s achievements as Chief Minister in the past 10 years. Interestingly, the website claims that between 2006 and 2010 when the Buddhadeb government faced stumbling blocks in its industrialisation drive from a determined opposition led by Mamata Banerjee, the state received investments of over `36,000 crore in 1,313 large and medium industrial units, creating direct employment opportunities for 1.41 lakh people.
There are some video clips of Mr Bhattacharjee’s news conferences and interviews as well. On the right hand side of the site is a column Face to Face where one can enter his or her name, email and question.