Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani bombarded with flurry of questions on Friday after the launch of a social media initiative–Twitter Town Hall– aimed at Chief Minister’s direct interaction with people of Gujarat.
Sources said that more than 30,000 questions bombarded from people as well as some of the leaders from rival political parties too. Interestingly it was difficult for the Government machinery to answer them as nearly 8,000 tweets to the CM Rupani was to be answered on Friday itself.
“There was complete silence on the twitter handle of the Chief Minister for more than couple of hours. The patience of tweeple appeared to run thin and they began taking a dig at the absence of Chief Minister from the microblogging site, floating hashtag #MissingGujaratCM,” said a source close to the development.
A local television channel partnered with twitter to invite questions from the twitterati using hashtag #AskVijayRupani. Rupani had announced the initiative on September 15 and it was popularised using hoardings at multiple locations, on television network, as well on social platforms by Rupani, several of his ministers, party members and even Government departments.
Questions ranging from employees working on fix pay in State Government, CM’s view on reservation, Patel agitation, Dalit issues as well as rise of AAP in the State. The television channel is learnt to have shortlisted a little over dozen of these questions which were asked to chief minister at a closed-door interview. The answers are slated to be televised in an interview format later on Friday evening.
“Twitter Town Hall was a phenomenal success. Such interactions strengthen democracy. I thank all the participants”, reacted CM Rupani at around 12.45 in the noon. The state BJP unit, meanwhile, thanked people from worldover for making this first-ever interaction with the chief minister a success!
“There must have been some technical problem, else in a twitter townhall, you get answers real time. We had done a similar townhall for senior minister in Modi government and questions were received on line and answered soon after by the Union Cabinet minister,” said a senior social media expert who works closely with several chief ministers and Union ministers currently.