New Delhi: Congress party, on Tuesday, sent a letter to the social media giant Twitter, sharing the tweet links of several Union Ministers regarding the alleged toolkit, urging the platform to put a tag of 'manipulative media' on those tweets in the same manner that was being done on the tweets by some BJP leaders.
This comes a day after the Delhi Police Special Cell visited the offices of Twitter in Delhi and Gurgaon, in connection with the probe over the alleged 'Congress toolkit' matter.
Congress Chief Spokesperson and General Secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala wrote to Vijaya Gadde, Lead for Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety, as well as to Jim Baker, Deputy General Counsel and Vice President, Legal, of Twitter, to urge them to affix 'manipulative media' tags to the tweets of Union Ministers in the Modi Government for "spreading false and malicious propaganda".
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Surjewala mentioned the previous letter written by the Congress party on the 'forged toolkit document' saying that it was being created by certain BJP leaders "to gain undue and wrongful political advantage" by spreading "potentially dangerous, false and fabricated material" through their Twitter handles, against the Indian National Congress and its leaders.
He shared some of the tweet links of Union Ministers including Shandilya Giriraj Singh, Piyush Goyal, Smriti Zubin Irani, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prahlad Joshi, Dharmendra Pradhan, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Thawarchand Gehlot, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat.
Surjewala stated, "You would appreciate that the forged, fabricated material and the claims made under the malicious #CongressToolkitExposed, by the various ministers above-named, is identical to the material that has already marked as ‘manipulative media’, by Twitter, on various accounts including that of the BJP Spokesperson- Mr. Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj)- who is also one of the main accused in FIR No. 215/2021 registered by Chhattisgarh Police at Police Station Civil Lines, Raipur (FIR is attached as Annexure B)."
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"Further, it is also a matter of fact that people tend to believe it to be 'true' any information that is put up directly by a Union Minister of the Government of India through his/ her official/ verified Twitter account. Hence, it becomes all the more imperative to tag, 'manipulative media', on all such tweets made by Ministers of the Government of India on the above referred forged toolkit document created by the BJP," he added.
He urged Twitter to deal with the aforementioned Union Ministers with the same yardstick as applied in other cases where the Twitter platform is "misused" to broadcast forged and fabricated material and all the aforesaid Tweets ‘Manipulative Media’ by the Twitter, Inc.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Police Special Cell, which under the Ministry of Home Affairs, has also served notices to Congress Social Media head Rohan Gupta and party's spokesperson Rajeev Gowda in connection with the probe being conducted in the toolkit matter. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra is also likely to be summoned for questioning in the upcoming days.
