Maharashtra police, AI firm team up to fight fake news
Shiv Sena in mid-1990s, was the Union Minister of State for Finance in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, and his son Radhakrishna a minister in the Manohar Joshi-led Shiv SENA-BJP government in Maharashtra.
In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha (LS) polls, Sujay Vikhe Patil, Radhakrishna’s son, joined the BJP to win from the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat. The father followed in the son’s footsteps to join the BJP in June, was inducted into Devendra Fadnavis’ Council of Ministers, and is now contesting on a BJP ticket from the Shirdi Assembly seat in the district, which he had won successively five times for the Congress from 1995 to 2014.
Other names on the bank’s plaque are of Bhausaheb Thorat, whose son Balasaheb is now the state unit chief of the Congress, former LS member Yashwantrao Gadakh Patil and several others. According to one research, over 50 per cent of the co-operatives had chairmen or vice-chairmen who have contested or won parliamentary or Assembly elections from 1993 onwards.
The bank itself takes care of the money of a web of businesses and people — an estimated 700,000 farmers, 24,000 women self-help groups with over 400,000 members, sugar co-operatives, educational institutions, agriculture price-marketing committees, and loan money to sundry employees’ associations.
The heat on the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, the apex of the 31 district cooperative banks, is yet to singe the one in Ahmednagar. Already under the scanner are Kapol Co-operative Bank, City Co-operative Bank, Karad Janata Sahakari Bank, Shivam Sahakari Bank, Youth Development Co-operative Bank, and Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank.
If the Vikhe Patils are the co-operative In the run-up to the Maharashtra State Assembly Elections, the Maharashtra Police has tied up with Logically, an extended intelligence (artificial and human intelligence)-powered tech firm, to detect and prevent the spread of fake news.
The company helps detects fake news, logical fallacy, and inaccuracies. It has been monitoring various social media platforms since 20 days to monitor cases of violation under the Model Code of Conduct (MCC).
These violations are then reported to the Election Commission of India (ECI). “Logically is confident of adding capabilities and capacity to the existing governmental and regulatory processes,” the company said. After evaluating the effectiveness of its collaborative approach during the polls, the company, along with the cyber cell, intends to continue improving its technical approach and scale this POC (Proof of Concept) in tandem with police departments of other states. The company has tools to detect and track problematic content. It also has 20 factcheckers and verification experts, who are keeping tabs on fake news. It has set up a war room in the Maharashtra Cyber Office at World Trade Center, which forms the central hub of all detection, tracking, reporting activities.
czars of Ahmednagar, the Pawars, led by Sharad Pawar, are of the Pune-baramati area. Several of Pawar’s associates in the co-operative movement have joined the BJP and Shiv Sena in recent years.