The Congress has written to Twitter asking them to flag tweets by 11 Union Ministers referring to the alleged “Congress toolkit” as “manipulated media”. It argued that all the tweets have similar content to what BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra posted which had been tagged as such.
This is in continuation of the party’s earlier communication pointing out the tweets. The Twitter, in response, had sought the URLs of the said tweets.
All the tweets that the Congress has listed out are from May 18 when Mr. Patra first posted a screenshot of the alleged “Congress toolkit”. Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala in his letter to Twitter said these tweets were posted with “clear mal-intent to exploit the social media space (Twitter) to spread lies and malicious propaganda throughout the territory of India”
Tweets of Smriti Irani, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan, Giriraj Singh, Piyush Goyal, Prahlad Joshi, Thawarchand Gehlot, Dr Harsh Vardhan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Ramesh Pokriyal Nishank and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are listed out.
“You would appreciate that the forged, fabricated material and the claims made under the malicious #CongressToolkitExposed, by the various ministers above-named, is identical to the material that has already marked as ‘manipulative media’, by Twitter, on various accounts including that of the BJP Spokesperson- Mr. Sambit Patra,” Mr. Surjewala wrote.
FIR against Patra
The Congress has filed an FIR against Mr. Patra in Raipur in connection with the case.
“It is also a matter of fact that people tend to believe ‘true’ and take on face value, any information that is put up directly by a Union Minister of the Government of India through his/ her official/ verified Twitter account,” Mr. Surjewala said, arguing that it becomes even more important that their tweets were also classified as “manipulative media”.
The Ministers he said, should be dealt with the same yardstick.
