Hyderabad: Former Member of Parliament (MP) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leader Kalvakuntla Kavitha became the first woman politician in South India to clock a million followers on the micro-blogging site Twitter, her office claimed.
Kavitha, who lost from the Nizamabad seat in the 2019 general elections, has been very active on social media in a bid to reach out to and help people ever since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown was imposed in March.
The daughter TRS supremo and Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, Kavitha’s closest contender (among women) as of now include DMK MP (from Tamil Nadu) Jothimani who has less than 150k followers on Twitter.
Kavitha, who is currently waiting to enter the state legislative council (as MLC elections have been delayed due to the COVID pandemic), has been utilising her time by helping citizens by supplying rations, including people from Telangana who live abroad, especially during the recent lockdown.
As of now, among women politicians in South India, Kavitha is well ahead of her contemporaries. She joined Twitter in 2010, at a time when the Telangana statehood demand had picked up. She gave a cultural thrust to the movement by launching an Telangana Jagruthi, an NGO to connect the spirit of Telangana with the movement. Following the state’s formation in 2014, Kavitha won from the Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat.
Among the social media campaigns Kavitha has undertaken so far, Kavitha more recently began the #ThankYouWarriors tag on Twitter to thank COVID-19 frontline warriors. She reached out to frontline COVID Warriors, to thank them and celebrated their contribution towards combating the virus.
Moreover, ever since the lockdown began, she has been responding to SOS appeals on Twitter, which include stranded or broke (residents of Telangana) Indian citizens who need monetary help or rations. Her reach on Twitter can also be attributed to a balance that she has been striking in terms of approaching people.
Moreover, the ex-MP is also known to be quite tech savvy. She had overlooked the TRS’s social media department during the 2018 state assembly elections. Her brother, K. T. Rama Rao, is the TRS’s working president and also state IT and Industries minister.