Budget interviews to be streamed live on social media

Last Updated: Tuesday, February 17, 2015, 21:38

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New Delhi: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emphasis on utilising social media to reach out to people, the first interviews of the Finance Minister and Railway Minister, after they present their respective budgets, will be streamed live on 'YouTube' while questions will be invited from the people through 'Twitter'.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has begun using a combination of social media platforms like 'YouTube', 'Twitter' and 'Facebook' to hold 'Talkathons', which it plans to utilise for the post budget interviews of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Railway Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, sources said.

It is learnt that while the post budget interviews will be conducted by national broadcaster Doordarshan, questions invited from public will be put to the ministers.

"The ministry had first held Talkathons at the International Film Festival of India last year, where interviews of eminent people were streamed live online on 'YouTube' as questions were posed to them by people in real time on Twitter and Facebook," a senior official said.

Minister of State in the Information and Broadcasting ministry Rajyavardhan Rathore confirmed that the ministry plans to utilise the 'Talkathon' mode for the post budget interviews.

"We may soon invite people to send their questions regarding the budgets on the social media," he said.

Officials said that as the experiment of holding Talkathons in IFFI Goa, was widely appreciated, the I&B ministry decided to hold Talkathons for Union Ministers.

The first Talkathon was organised by the I&B ministry yesterday, where Minister of State for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal today answered around 20 questions from the people for nearly 30 minutes.

A young Indian Information Service (IIS) officer played the role of the anchor, putting questions posed by the people to the Minister.

After the Narendra Modi-led government stormed to power at the Centre, the I&B ministry has increasingly focussed on using social media to reach out to the people.