As assembly elections in Assam draw closer, Congress IT cell resorted to spreading manipulated and misleading content. Recently, in its attempt to mount an attack against the BJP, Congress IT Cell head Rohan Gupta shared a cropped video from PM Modi’s rally in Assam on Twitter.
PM Modi in the video had called out Congress formula of keeping the poor poor and exploiting them for electoral gains. However, the snippet shared by Gupta was carefully cropped to give an impression that PM Modi was advocating the exploitation of the poor for votes.
No comments ! pic.twitter.com/qOiUgJA9Sy
— Rohan Gupta (@rohanrgupta) March 21, 2021
Gupta conveniently edited out the part in which PM Modi elaborated on how it was the Congress modus operandi of preying on the poor and making false promises to them to win their votes.
Here’s the entire video where in PM Modi slammed Congress for fooling poor for gaining votes:
SPREADING LIES IS THE 50 years Congress Formula to Stay in Power LIKE DONE IN ABOVE VIDEO- WATCH WHAT PM @narendramodi ACTUALLY SAID- Keep the Poor Poor & LURE them for Votes with FALSE PROMISES this is Cong formula #AssamAssemblyPolls #AssamWithHimantaBiswa #BJPOnceMoreInAssam pic.twitter.com/trYFXkmos1
— Rosy (@rose_k01) March 22, 2021
“Congress has a habit of making false promises in their manifestos. Show dreams to poor, lie to them, make them fight each other and rule them, this has been the Congress formula of staying in power at the centre,” PM Modi says as he elaborates how Congress has consciously kept the poor in the country poor and have deceitfully sought votes in their name.
In essence, Gupta shared a cropped video of PM Modi in which he was exposing the longstanding Congress formula of duping the poor by making assurances and promises that were never fulfilled.
It is also entirely expected that the Congress party and its stooges in the media fraternity would rush in the defence of the grand old party, downplaying the misleading video as a meme posted for entertainment purposes. The snippet shared by the Congress IT Cell head is not a meme, not by a long shot. It was a deceptive video, shared with the specific purpose of showing PM Modi and the BJP government in a bad light.
Twitter’s left bias and its penchant for repeatedly interfering in the Indian politics
It is also worth noting that social media behemoth Twitter, which has championed the cause of fighting misinformation on its platform by labelling suspicious tweets as ‘manipulated content’, did not bother to publish any such label for the tweet in which Rohan Gupta shared the misleading video.
It leads one to wonder if Twitter is really impartial in dishing out its misleading content label or whether such categorisation is only reserved for the tweets posted by the BJP leaders and not for the opposition politicians who peddle falsehoods and manipulated content.
In December 2020, BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya shared a video debunking the lies peddled by the Congress leaders. Malviya shared a video in response to an image shared by Rahul Gandhi wherein he insinuated that the police was beating up an old farmer.
However, pictures often don’t reveal the entire story. A complete video of the incident from which the image was cunningly edited out demonstrates an altogether different story.
The video shows that the law enforcement official who is portrayed in the image as beating up an old ‘farmer’ simply swings the baton in the air to scare the protester away. The baton did not touch the protester. Yet, several Congress leaders and the IT cell bot deceitfully shared the picture to paint the security official as the victim of police brutality.
Malviya had shared a video to call out this treachery of the Congress leaders. However, his tweet was labelled by Twitter as ‘manipulated media’ while no such label was attached to scores of tweets posted by Congress leaders that carried the misleading picture.
Similarly, in the recent case where Congress IT Cell head Rohan Gupta tweeted a cropped out video of PM Modi, the social media giant didn’t censor the content by branding it as “manipulated content”. Instead, it shunned the role of regulating content and allowed the deceptive video on its platform. This is yet another instance when Twitter has displayed its penchant to interfere in the Indian elections.
At the heart of this interference by Twitter is their leftist bias. For some time now, Twitter has been accused of furthering leftist propaganda. In fact, the tech giant is even unabashed about it, with its CEO Jack Dorsey proudly admitting that the employees in his organisation had a left-leaning bias.
Many governments across the world have blamed Twitter for unscrupulously influencing their elections and favouring the leftist parties. The Donald Trump regime repeatedly accused Twitter of targeting it while giving a free pass to the democrats.
Something similar is underway in India where leftists are allowed to peddle lies and misleading content, while attempts are made to muzzle those who do not conform to their worldview.
The Indian government must take urgent notice of these developments and take preventive measures to curb these interferences or else it won’t be too long before Twitter and other social media platforms start using advanced technological tools at their disposal and overtly manipulate public opinion as was witnessed during the American Presidential elections.
Additionally, the government should also probe if opposition parties in India are conniving with the social media behemoth to influence the upcoming assembly polls.
