Krithika C Kotyan, a post-graduate student in computer science, eagerly awaits BJP president Amit Shah’s arrival.Braving the heat, she travelled 22 km from her coastal village, Uchchila, to Udupi. All this to know from Shah what is expected of the party’s social media activists ahead of the elections to the Karnataka assembly.This is the first district-level social media interaction BJP organised in the temple town for its social media workers in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts. The hall is full with 1,000-plus youth, mostly students from government and private colleges. Kotyan, hailing from a fisherman’s family, is a new entrant. She is well-versed with social media tools, but needs some handholding with regards to how it should be used in the political context. Shah’s talk would give her the insight.The party’s social media activists are adding students like her — in hundreds — on their WhatsApp groups as the party seeks to deepen its clout in coastal Karnataka. BJP is desperate, largely because it holds just two of the 13 seats in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, in the present assembly. And, the ruling Congress holds 10.BJP’s social media cell convener Balaji Srinivas requests their social media activists to devote four hours a day, especially on WhatsApp and Facebook , so that the party reaches Shah’s target of winning 150 assembly seats.Srinivas, a former techie in Bengaluru, says there are 4.90 crore people eligible to vote, and in about 170 of 224 constituencies, it is possible to pull sections of ‘undecided’ voters towards BJP with the use of social media tools.Karnataka, he says, has 3 crore internet users, and the coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi have the highest number of web portals after Bengaluru. The 2.6 crore active WhatsApp users can play a big role in the polls, he tells them.BJP, he claims, has conquered 80% of social media in Karnataka, but cautions that opposition parties, having understood the importance of social media, will give them competition.He cheers approvingly of workers who are administrators of five or more WhatsApp groups.Shah, in his hour-long interaction — which was not open to the media — apparently told participants to highlight the failures of Siddaramaiah regime at every opportunity, while spreading the word about the benefits PM Modi has showered on Karnataka. His party’s social media managers say that Shah’s phrase on Tuesday — of ‘from goonda raj to good governance’, in reference to Siddaramaiah’s rule — trended well on social media. To reach out to social media literates, the party runs three active Whats-App groups targeted at women, youth and the general public, and has widely publicised its numbers to invite others.Deepika Bhat, a young homemaker in Udupi, says the party has chalked out specific plans on how many social media groups they need to form in each block of every assembly constituency.A post-graduate, Bhat is active on Twitter , Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, and is involved in networking with women voters in the coastal region.Kotyan’s learning overPolitics, apparently, is not what drew her to BJP’s social media network. On the group, she would come to know about the various government schemes available for students like her.“There are various scholarships available in the State, about which I want to educate other students,” says she.