Voices in his party may still be debating his personality but at 80, BJP leader L K Advani is beginning to discover that one way of connecting to Young India is via the world wide web. And this, some in the party believe, could well be the counter to the Congress projection of Rahul Gandhi as someone who is IT-savvy, a face the youth can relate to.

The website www.mycountrymylife.com — it’s on Advani’s autobiography — got one lakh “page views” within 24 hours of its launch last week, say his media managers. One “hit” translates into multiple “page views” but the BJP IT cell is ecstatic.

“Leading websites across the world get up to one million hits a month. So we’re not doing badly,” says BJP IT cell chief Pradyut Bora. Data collated by the cell shows that the youth form the chunk of the 250 million Net users in the country.

The website, however, is only the beginning of a makeover that the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate is set to get. Advani will soon have an interactive website — he may also chat everyday. The site will have dedicated Indian language sections and the book site will then become its appendage.

Advani told The Indian Express: “Many people were surprised when I requisitioned the services of an advertisement agency for election-related work way back in 1970s. Technology is important in the evolution of a political party. The last quarter century has seen the maximum number of inventions with the Internet being perhaps the most important one.”

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