BJP, Congress spar over Rahul’s Twitter popularity as report suggests ‘bot’ link

A war of words on Saturday broke out between the BJP and the Congress over Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter resurgence after news agency ANI suggested ‘bots’ or web robots that can produce automated mass retweets were behind it.

Information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani took to the microblogging website to suggest that the retweets were from fake accounts abroad. Questioning whether automated bots were mass retweeting Gandhi’s tweets, the report said that on October 15, ‘OfficeofRG’ retweeted US President Donald Trump’s tweet praising American-Pakistani relations with a caption ‘Modi ji quick, looks like President Trump needs another hug’.

The tweet quickly reached 20,000 retweets and currently has touched 30,000, the report claimed, adding a close analysis of this tweet showed that these alleged ‘bots’ with a Russian, Kazakh or Indonesian characteristic were routinely retweeting Gandhi’s tweets.

An internet bot is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the internet.

However, the veracity of report could not be independently ascertained.

Rajeev Shukla, Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Gandhi family loyalist, jumped to the party vice-president’s defence, saying social media connects the whole world and retweets originating from Russia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia should not be considered out of place.

“They (the BJP) are afraid of Rahul Gandhi and his popularity,” he told TV channels.

Another Congress leader and former Union minister RPN Singh said it is unimportant how many times a tweet has been retweeted.

He said what is important is the issues Rahul has been highlighting through his tweets.

He rejected the news agency’s claims that ‘bots’ were behind the perceived rise in Gandhi’s popularity on Twitter. “There is nothing like that,” he said.

NEWDELHI: