Twitter Flags BJP’s Sambit Patra’s Toolkit Tweet As ‘Manipulated Media’

Fact-checking website Alt News said the “AICC (All India Congress Committee) Research Department” letterhead on the documents was forged and raised questions on the content, saying the BJP had not shared the original documents.

Microblogging site Twitter today flagged BJP Spokesperson Sambit Patra’s tweet on a “Congress Toolkit” that was allegedly used by the opposition party to defame Prime Minister Modi and discredit the government.

This comes after Congress wrote a letter to Twitter seeking suspension of handles of senior BJP leaders like JP Nadda, Smriti Irani, Sambit Patra, and BL Santosh. It alleged these leaders are spreading “forged documents” to target the Congress.

Friends look at the #CongressToolKit in extending help to the needy during the Pandemic!
More of a PR exercise with the help of “Friendly Journalists” & “Influencers” than a soulful endeavour.
Read for yourselves the agenda of the Congress:#CongressToolKitExposed pic.twitter.com/3b7c2GN0re

— Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) May 18, 2021

In a tweet posted on May 18, Patra said “Friends look at the #CongressToolKit in extending help to the needy during the Pandemic! More of a PR exercise with the help of “Friendly Journalists” & “Influencers” than a soulful endeavor. Read for yourselves the agenda of the Congress: #CongressToolKitExposed,” attaching screenshots of the alleged toolkit. The document has been shared in two parts – four pages of a COVID-19 ‘toolkit’ and four pages of research on the issues with the Central Vista project.

Disgusting to say the least ..Rahul Gandhi wanting to use this opportunity of Pandemic to destroy the image of PM Modi.
Congress workers instructed to call the mutant strain as “Modi strain”
No stone left unturned to scar the name of India with the help of Foreign Journalists!! pic.twitter.com/i1ykMB00MA

— Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) May 18, 2021

Many top BJP leaders, including party president JP Nadda and Union ministers Smriti Irani, Hardeep Puri, Anurag Thakur, Piyush Goyal, amplified Patra’s tweet. The party also alleged that the toolkit was aimed at building a biased narrative over the Indian government’s handling of the second wave of Covid-19, and the Central Vista Project.

Following the controversy, Congress, on May 20 filed an FIR against the BJP leaders at Bajaj Nagar Police Station in Jaipur. It accused the BJP of indulging in politics of lies, deceit, and hypocrisy.

Also Read: Covid Toolkit Case: Congress Lodges FIR Against JP Nadda, Smriti Irani, Other BJP Leaders

Fact-checking website Alt News said the “AICC (All India Congress Committee) Research Department” letterhead on the documents was forged and raised questions on the content, saying the BJP had not shared the original documents.

“This (pages of the Central Vista document viral on social media) is part of a larger 6-page document which is a background note on policy and issues facing the nation. They seem to have obtained it illegally, and used it as a model to create a fake document, with forged letterhead,” AICC Research Department chairman Rajeev Gowda told Alt News.

Twitter’s “synthetic and manipulated media policy” states, “You may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm. In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”

The microblogging site also says it “may label Tweets that include media (videos, audio, and images) that have been deceptively altered or fabricated“. While in most cases the action is restricted to labeling, the posts can be removed if they check all the boxes – found synthetic or manipulated, shared in a deceptive manner, and likely to cause harm.