Mamata Banerjee’s TMC plans 30,000 ‘cyber sainiks’ to counter BJP online

The Trinamool Congress plans to build a team of 30,000 “cyber sainiks” to take on the BJP’s social media campaign ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the plan while speaking to party workers at a Digital Conclave in Kolkata, and reportedly promised a reward for the best performers.

How the team will work

Banerjee said she would keep a data bank of workers who spread the achievements of the government and party on social media and who respond to what she called malicious attempts by the BJP and others to defame the TMC. Their details would be recorded and good work rewarded, she said.

She said youths in every district would compete to highlight the party’s work and to counter the BJP with facts and figures. She also asked workers to reply to the BJP in Hindi, not only in Bengali, to reach a wider audience.

Her nephew, Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee, said every assembly constituency would have at least 100 sainiks. He also wanted the team to persuade people who had left the party to come back, asking each member to bring two people back every week.

Background

The 63-year-old Banerjee has been trying to build a “Federal Front” of parties outside the BJP and the Congress for the 2019 election, hoping to play a bigger role at the Centre. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls the TMC won 34 of West Bengal’s 42 seats, and in 2016 it won 211 of the 294 assembly seats. The BJP won three seats in 2016, though its vote share has grown in local body elections since then.

What happened next

The Trinamool Congress won 215 seats in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election against 77 for the BJP, and Mamata Banerjee remained Chief Minister.

See also: election news and Bharatiya Janata Party.

Originally published on 12 September 2018. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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