By Saiyed Moziz Imam

New Delhi, May 7 (IANS): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's interaction with noted economists Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI chief, and Abhijeet Banerjee, the Nobel Laureate, on separate ocassion pondering over the measures taken to fight the Covid-19 pandemic discussing economic strategy going way forward was viewed by massive 7.5 crore people, the party has said.

The strategy devised by the Congress social media team has earned dividend, said sources in the party's social media team who added that there are various layers to reach out people.

Rohan Gupta who heads the Social media team of the AICC said: "Basically we have a social media setup and internal in house system we can do live leaders and supporters page this is helping us to reach all the platforms."

The party is using all live elements on social media platforms. The event of Rahul Gandhi was streamed live on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter which is also streamed on the pages of all the prominent leaders of the state.

Rohan Gupta told IANS how they have managed to reach such a huge number.

"The interaction was live streamed on 300 Twitter handles, 500 Facebook pages and 100 YouTube channels.

"For this the party had sent a circular to all states to live stream the events. The State leaders had further asked district heads to live stream the event to get maximum traction due to independent YouTube channels live streaming it.

"It is pleasant to see that lots of independent media platforms You tube channels and FB pages, Twitter handles and volunteers have used our link to go live," added Gupta.

The Congress has mapped its workers who are active on social media in each district and has put a team in place to counter the BJP-narrative.

Rohan Gupta said that the only to break the myth created by BJP was to take it through the social media route which has no boundaries. "For this we are working to fix the problem of the ground level social media worker," Gupta added.

"I think the kind of traction the party is getting that people now believe that Congress was right on the pandemic and our acceptance is growing on the issue. While the Congress is talking of reality the government is doing only lip service," said Rohan Gupta

He claimed that the Congress has surpassed the Bharatiya Janata Party in its reach on the social media handles despite BJP claiming more followers.

The party said that after the Rajan and Banerjee events got over they translated both into local languages and put small snippets to get more traction for the party. The party got good traction on the Palghar lynching and murder of Sadhus in Uttar Pradesh despite BJP going all out, said an insider.

The social media team meets everyday to devise strategy and all state heads attend the meet daily despite lockdown through video confrencing.

Rohan Gupta said that the party is totally dependent on the volunteers and no outsourcing is done. He took charge after Kannada actor Ramya quit the post.