In recent days Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly taken to his Twitter account to attack the ruling BJP over their initiatives and activities. And now, it would seem that the party is not holding back when it comes to countering his attacks.
Less than an hour after Gandhi cited a recent Wall Street Journal report to say that the "BJP and RSS control Facebook and WhatsApp in India", Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has hit back.
"BJP and RSS control Facebook and WhatsApp in India. They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. Finally, the American media has come out with the truth about Facebook," gandhi had claimed, sharing screenshots of the news report.
Reacting to this, Prasad said that "losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP and RSS".
"You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?" he asked.
According to the article, a senior Facebook official in India was opposed to applying hate speech rules against leaders associated with the BJP and other Hindutva groups.
As per the report, Ankhi Das, who is Facebook’s top public policy executive in India, opposed applying hate speech rules to the BJP’s T. Raja Singh out of fear of ruining the company’s relationship with the ruling party.
Earlier in the day, another BJP leader, Sambit Patra had hit out at Rahul, citing a comment by Sonia Gandhi where she had wondered whether freedom of expression was still a reality in the country.
"Your Son’s Failures cannot be projected as fallacies of Democracy. If Your Son’s writings on tweets & Utterances in 1/2 second videos are not not taken seriously by the Nation ..it means the fault lies with your Son not with Democracy (sic)," he had tweeted.
