NEW DELHI: The Congress party has denied the allegation that UK-based analytics firm Cambridge Analytica offered the Indian National Congress to use its services for a ‘budget’ of about Rs 2.5 crore in the 2019 general election.
According to a leaked 49-page ‘proposal’ made in August 2017 on social media, the Cambridge Analytics (CA) suggests using Facebook data for “influencing the voter intention”.
Praveen Chakravarthy, in charge of data analytics department of the Congress party, told PTI the Congress is a big national party and receives so many proposals, but it never hired the services of CA.”There has been no relationship or understanding with Cambridge Analytica”.
The recently appointed Praveen Chakravarthy added that “There is no reason for the Congress to obfuscate on this issue. The Congress party has never hired the services of Cambridge Analytica.”
The document which is circulated on the social media highlights the major points the party should focus on. “It (Congress) must quickly be perceived as the antithesis of corruption and the embodiment of effective governance and economic emancipation. Key to this is a robust understanding of the electorate and an equally robust strategy to communicate with them in accordance with contemporary attitudes, grievances, and motivations that are unique to 21st-century digital data,” the proposal said.
The proposal also included “indicative budget” of $389,460 (about Rs 2.53 crore) for the 2019 election. It talked about a plan to “disrupt the BJP’s current monopoly on India’s ‘smartphone voters’ by building a world-class data and digital capacity for the Congress in a similar vein to what we (CA) did for the Trump campaign in 2016”.
The CA proposal included a national situational analysis, including a comprehensive review of the Congress’ communications activity, the creation of a national data infrastructure project, a data-driven campaign for the 2019 elections and separately strategize the state assembly polls.
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