BJP credits bots for Rahul Gandhi's rise on social media

New Delhi: The BJP, which has been leading the race among political parties to dominate the social media, has begun questioning the sudden rise in Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s popularity on microblogging site Twitter.

Leading the charge against Mr Gandhi, information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani tweeted, tagging a news agency report suggesting use of fake retweets by the Congress, “Perhaps @OfficeOfRG planning to sweep polls in Russia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan?”

The news agency had reported that a number of automated bots or web robots that can produce automated mass retweets with a Russian, Kazakh or Indonesian characteristic have been frequently retweeting Mr Gandhi’s posts on Twitter.

A Twitterbot is a software which may autonomously perform actions such as tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing or direct messaging other accounts.

The agency 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.

Ms Irani’s attack on Mr Gandhi raised doubts about the Congress vice president’s alleged attempts to hoodwink people and claim that he was getting popular on the social media and posing a challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP takes pride in the popularity of the Prime Minister on the social media. Mr Modi has a whopping 3.56 crore Twitter followers and is ranked 31 for the number of followers among all Twitter users.

Ms Irani also retweeted reactions of other netizens, including Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar who tweeted, “Desperate times call for desperate measures?”

Her junior in the ministry, Rajyavardhan Rathore, compared the Congress leader’s alleged act of generating fake tweets to doping in sports. “In sports, this would come under doping... ,” he said in a tweet.

After Mr Gandhi’s recent visit to the US, the frequency of tweets and the number of followers of his official account had seen a massive increase. He has also become more active on twitter and has been frequently taking digs at the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Countering Ms Irani’s attack on Mr Gandhi, former MP and chief Congress social media cell Divya Spandana rubbished the reports on use of alleged bots.

Ms Spandana, in a tweet, said that the agency story “is factually wrong… can understand your eagerness to please the information and broadcasting minister and the ‘Bots Janata Party’.”

She also hit out at Ms Irani in her tweet and said,  “Why do we need them (referring to bots) when we have you?”

Another Congress leader R.P.N Singh said it is unimportant how many times a tweet has been retweeted. He said what are important are the issue Mr Gandhi has been highlighting through his tweets.

The agency report said that twitter accounts of the alleged bots showed they had less than 10 followers and retweeted random subjects from around the world, including tweets of Mr Gandhi.