In real world, voting to elect the new mayor of Bhopal would be held on January 31, but in the virtual world, the voting is on and the people are expressing their views in favour and against the main contestants of the BJP and the Congress. In the State capital, there is direct fight between the arch political rivals- the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress in the run for the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) election and the mayoral candidate for BJP is Alok Sharma while Congress has fielded Kailash Mishra.
The impatient young generation is not ready to wait for the official outcome of the polling and is seeking support of the social networking site facebook to know as who would be the new mayor of the city of lakes. A post on the facebook by Bhai Syed Arman Husain posted on Thursday with pictures of both major contestants Alok Sharma and Kailash Mishra telling ‘Sach kehna kon jitega ap k hisaab se bhopal ka mahapor kon’ (speak truth who would win according to you, who would be mayor of Bhopal) is drawing attention of the people and people are commenting on it expressing their views besides liking the post.
Husain while talking to The Pioneer, said, “The social networking sites are good medium to know the views of people that is why I thought to know as what Bhopal is thinking about its future mayor and whom the people are thinking as their next mayor. With all this in mind I posted on the facebook to take people’s view and trends about the next Bhopal mayor.” However, Husain was little bit disappointed over the slow response to the post as he got only a hundred comments and likes after about couple of hours of posting it on the social networking site.
In any case, the response on the virtual world over the opinion for new city mayor appears to be going with the common perception doing rounds in the city that BJP’s Alok Sharma would win with huge margin. However, the official result would be declared on February 4 and city would get new mayor on that date only. The polling for the BMC election would be held on January 31 while counting of that would take place on February 4 that is when the new mayor and 85 new Corporators would officially be declared winners.