The BITS Pilani Election Commission which is in charge of conducting the Students Union Elections on campus has often been accused of having very rigid norms. The guidelines issued by them include points which forbid candidates to advertise using animals (?!) or address a group of more than 8.

This time around though they have gone easy on one rule. The candidates are allowed to have one blog each to express their views. And the most heartening part is seeing that WordPress was chosen as the blogging platform.

It’s will be interesting to see if the e-campaigning will make any difference.

On the other hand its rather sad to see how the essence of the new web is completely lost with the EC still living in WEB 1.0. Blogs yes, but comments disabled. And what about twitter? Does the EC understand the meaning of posting content online. Do they realise that although they can stop the presidential candidates from campaigning on other mediums, they cant stop the 4000 plus people on campus from sharing these posts on twitter, orkut facebook or delicious. Neither can they stop people from posting responses to these posts on their own blogs (or can they?). All these is effectively campaigning for one of the two candidates.

Oh well, lets wait and watch

Presidential blogs:

Praveendra Singh Mahla

Sudheer Babu

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com