New Delhi: A war of words on Saturday broke out between the BJP and the Congress over Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter resurgence after a news agency suggested ‘bots’ or web robots can produce automated mass retweets.
Information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani took to the microblogging website to suggest that the retweets were from fake accounts abroad.
“Perhaps @OfficeOfRG planning to sweep polls in Russia, Indonesia & Kazakhstan ?? #RahulWaveInKazakh,” she said in a tweet which tagged the media report.
Questioning whether automated bots were mass retweeting Mr Gandhi’s tweets, the report said that on October 15, ‘OfficeofRG’ retweeted US President Donald Trump’s tweet praising American-Pakistani relations with a caption ‘Modi ji quick, looks like President Trump needs another hug’.
The tweet quickly reached 20,000 retweets and currently has touched 30,000, the report claimed, adding a close analysis of this tweet showed that these alleged ‘bots’ with a Russian, Kazakh or Indonesian characteristic were routinely retweeting the Congress vice-president’s tweets.
An Internet bot is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet. However, the veracity of report could not be independently ascertained.
Rajeev Shukla, Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Gandhi family loyalist, jumped to the party vice-president’s defence, saying social media connects the whole world and retweets originating from Russia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia should not be considered out of place.
“They (the BJP) are afraid of Rahul Gandhi and his popularity,” he said.
