BJP Wins Round One In Twitter War With Congress

Rahul Gandhi's sarcastic tweet directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week saying, "Modiji quick; looks like President Trump needs another hug" went through the roof in terms of tweet count (30.3k and still climbing) and naturally raised the eyebrows of social media watchers. The Congress leader's satirical comment was in response to President Trump's acknowledgement on Twitter about "a much better relationship with Pakistan and its leaders."

In recent days, Rahul has been increasingly aggressive on the social media trying to take Modi on and generating an unusually high number of retweets. His social media make-over seemed to go with his new-found political aggressiveness on display at rallies in Gujarat and elsewhere.

The BJP's social media army accused the Congress and its leadership of manufacturing social media hype and trying to position Rahul as a political equal to Modi on Twitter and Facebook through what its spokespersons described as seemingly fraudulent means. Rahul Gandhi's Twitter "resurgence" is attributed to bots in Indonesia, Russia and Kazakhstan by BJP's followers, including I & B Minister Smriti Irani on Twitter. Irani derisively tweeted yesterday, "perhaps @OfficeofRG planning to sweep polls in Russia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan? She used the hashtag #RahulWaveinKazakh for added effect. It's worth recalling that Irani and the Congress scion are political adversaries in the Lok Sabha constituency of Amethi.

Amit Malviya, the head of BJP's IT cell, Subramanian Swamy, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajyavardhan Rathore and journalist Minhaz Merchant, among others mocked Rahul's digital make-over. Some BJP activists on Twitter accused him having been "in talks with Cambridge Analytica", a company which is known to use Russian bots. In May this year Time Magazine reported that the US Congress was investigating the company on Russian attempts to interfere with the US presidential election.

Once the news of the bot conncection to Rahul Gandhi's tweeting went viral, there was simply no way of dousing the fires. A news channel ran a prime time debate with the hashtag #RahulBotAttack, while some others used #Botgate.

The Congress, on its part, had its own version, though it appeared to be caught unawares by the sudden turn of events. The party's Social Media and Digital Communications head, Divya Spandana/Ramya called ANI's report "factually wrong". Her response was a way of shrugging off any responsibility the party was expected to take:"On Twitter one tweets and what happens after that is not in our control. You will have to speak to Twitter to get clarity." Other leaders went into a silent mode as seen by the timelines of the articulate Randeep Surjewala and Sanjay Jha. Abhishek Singhvi, Ajay Maken and several others decided to ignore the issue, hoping perhaps, that it would blow away.

For now it appears, that the BJP has the Congress on the social media mat, but time will tell as to how these digital duels will eventually play out.