Ravi Shankar Prasad warns FB of action if it sways electoral process
New Delhi: Hours after Congress leader Manish Tewari said the Election Commission should investigate which party had or has links with disgraced firm Cambridge Analytica, the BJP on Wednesday fielded Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who tried to drag the Opposition party into the controversy.
The website of Cambridge Analytica’s India chapter (https://capolitical.com/casestudies/casestudyindia), however, claimed it had provided services for the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) in 2010. The India chapter’s website states: “CA was contracted to undertake an in-depth electorate analysis for the Bihar Assembly election in 2010. The core challenge was to identify floating/swing voters for each of the parties and to measure their levels of electoral apathy, a result of the poor and unchanging condition of the state after 15 years of incumbent rule.”
During his press conference on Wednesday, Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad posed three questions to the Congress: “Will Congress depend on data manipulation and theft to woo voters? Does Congress endorse methods used by CA, namely sex, sleaze and fake news? What is CA’s role in Rahul Gandhi’s social media profile?”
The BJP leader cited some media reports which suggested that the Congress will use the services of Cambridge Analytica for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Mr Prasad also cited reports which suggested that the rise in Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter profile could be due to “bots”, which is a software application.
Mr Prasad also warned social media platforms like Facebook of stringent action if any attempt was made by them to influence the country’s electoral process through “undesirable means”.
Stating that 20 crore Indians were using Facebook, that made it the company’s largest market outside the United States, Mr Prasad cautioned the Mark Zuckerberg of repercussions under India’s IT Act in case any data breach came to light.
