BJP, Cong slugfest on Facebook data theft escalates

Congress accuses Modi government of baiting the media Rahul’s social media campaign was ‘managed’ by CA: BJP

The Congress on Thursday dared Law and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad to register the FIR against Londonbased Cambridge and its Indian arm Ovelina Business Intelligence (OBI) if they were meddling in the Indian elections with theft of the users’ data from Facebook.

Why is he holding press conferences to spin lies instead of booking these companies, Congress communication chief Randeep Singh Surjewala and party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked, denying any Congress link with the two companies.

Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad too upped the ante for the second day against the Congress over its alleged links with British data firm Cambridge Analytica at the centre of the Facebook data breach storm. He cited news reports on Congress purportedly in discussions with the firm for a partnership ahead of the 2019 general elections and insisted that the Congress president used its services in the Gujarat Assembly elections in 2017.

Surjewala rather turned tables on ruling Bhartiya Janata Party to show it had everything to do with these two companies and that is why Prasad was resorting to innuendos instead of taking legal steps against them. How can he act against the firms that helped the BJP all these years, he asked.

He posed eight questions to Prasad to deny if the BJP had not made use of the two companies in the elections, a charge he is levelling on the Congress and its president Rahul Gandhi.

It’s like “Chor machaye shor’ (noise by the thief) or did Prasad inadvertently expose the BJP’s top secret of four years of using the data theft to win the elections, asked Surjewala, challenging him to deny the claims made by OBI vice-president Himanshu Sharma on his Linkdin profile about his organisation actively working for the BJP.

He alleged that Sharma’s Linkdin as also the websites from which the Congress quickly downloaded the data to bust Prasad’s falsehoods have been shut but the Congress has already made the record before they went down.

Did the BJP and the Janata Dal(U) of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar not use Cambridge Analytica and OBI in the 2012 Assembly elections as also in the election in Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana and Jharkhand as also in the BJP’s 272+ mission in the Lok Sabha elections, Surjewala asked.

If the Cambridge Analytica is crook company, how come Arvind Gupta, former BJP IT-Data head and now head of MyGov website and working directly under Prasad’s ministry, praise it with a tweet on 15 October 2017: “CA is powerful tool and when used correctly, can provide deep insights and fine tune communication and outreach strategy.”

Surjewala said Prasad should have consulted Gupta before spoofing venom against the firm. He went on to show from an internet download how Information and Broadcasting Ministry Smriti Irani has been following the firm CA.

On Prasad’s latest discovery of the CA allegedly prompting Rahul Gandhi to distort the Goods and Services Tax as “Gabbar Singh Tax” on Twitter, Surjewala said he is the IT minister and as such he should know the difference between the businesses done by Facebook and Twitter.

“Rahul Gandhi’s entire social media campaign has been managed with the help of Cambridge Analytica. This company is known for aggressive, fake news, below standard campaign. Do I need to record before you the language of Rahul Gandhi, Gabbar Singh Tax and the whole social media campaign,” Prasad asked.

On Thursday, Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to accuse the government of inventing the data leak to divert attention from the issue of killing of 39 Indian labourers in Iraq’s Mosul by terrorist group ISIS. Rahul said the Modi government was “caught lying” on the Indians’ death and so it wanted “media networks bite bait; (so that) 39 Indians vanish from radar...and problem solved.”

“Problem: 39 Indians dead; Govt on the mat, caught lying.

“Solution: Invent story on Congress & Data Theft,” Rahul tweeted.

Prasad, however, refused to back out his allegation of the Congress ties with the rogue British firm and asked Rahul to stop politicising the killing of 39 Indians in Iraq.