New Delhi: The frenzied reactions of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters on social media against anyone strongly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his policies are not organised by the party, says the cyber czar of BJP. Arvind Gupta, BJP’s IT cell chief, who is called an “innovation evangelist” by his office, says his job is to give out correct information. “How a particular person takes that information and communicates it is completely his or her own take. We can’t control that,” Gupta said in an interview to IANS.
Gupta, who was responding to a charge that often BJP and RSS supporters attack people who oppose Modi or his polices, at times in offensive language. “Sometimes, misinformation campaigns are run by opponents and we need to counter that with correct information in real time. People have their own passion and communications styles,” Gupta said, adding that “it’s not possible to understand who is a member and who is not.”
Gupta, who holds a B.Tech in electronics engineering from IIT-BHU and a masters in business & computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in the US, says there are guidelines for the supporters and members to follow on social media. “We always ask them to follow these,” he said. “The prime minister himself has asked everyone to follow a certain etiquette. Ignore negativities, take criticism positively,” he asserted. The party, he stated, always communicated through official handles, spokespersons and office bearers. Gupta, who headed the digital and social media campaign for Modi during the 2014 elections, conceded that it was also difficult to control social media.
The party has often come under criticism for allowing vicious verbal attacks on critics by its supporters.
The BJP-led government has been on a social media overdrive since it assumed power in May 2014 and Gupta says “Digital First” is now in BJP’s DNA as directed by Modi himself. Gupta has been looking at BJP’s cyber interests since 2010. “It is not any one person’s job. Everybody is playing their role. It is a job of the party to propagate the good policies of it to take it forward. It is the job of the government to ensure every citizen, every stakeholder gets the information,” said Gupta, who has a team of about 20 people in Delhi. Various units in the states help to move information on the internet.
Gupta, who led the “Ab Ki Bar Modi Sarkar” campaign in the run-up to the April-May 2014 general election, said the transformational change in the past 15 months had also involved citizens in decision-making. The logos for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna and Swachh Bharat were all crowd sourced from the MyGov platform, he said as an example. “The prime minister himself picks up messages from this platform.” He said the change is spreading out fast.
