Last week, Radio Mirchi VP and AAP sympathiser Akash Banerjee were put in the dock by ABP News editor Milind Khandekar for spreading a “doctored” video on social media. Now, the Congress’s social media team has been caught attempting something similar, this time by photo-shopping a picture of India Today channel’s screen grabs.
The twitter handle “@DrunkVinodMehta” is a Congress Social Media team member, as per his/her chat with Economic Times . This account has now been caught spreading a patently fake and malicious photo which is aimed at deriding PM Modi. The account is followed by Congress leader Ajay Maken and also by Omar Abdullah of the National Conference
Yesterday, the account tweeted the following picture, claiming to be the result of a poll conducted by India Today.
https://twitter.com/DrunkVinodMehta/status/713058905589329920
The poll, according to this picture and the accompanying tweet, claimed that Modi’s popularity has taken a severe beating and has come down to just 21%. Ironically, the tweet also derides a “photoshop model” of Modi, which has apparently been exposed.
The screen-grab is not dated, but it does say that the survey was conducted by C Voter. If indeed it is a recent survey, then it can only be India Today’s “Mood of the Nation”, conducted in February 2016. But that survey was not done by C Voter. It was conducted by an agency called Karvy, on behalf of India Today. And the results of that survey, are starkly different:
Most shockingly, even C Voter founder, Yashwant Deshmukh slammed the tweet from the Congress IT Cell handle and clarified that it was plainly a poor photoshop:
https://twitter.com/YRDeshmukh/status/713266771235569664
Later, as it was revealed by Twitterati, the original and the photoshopped pictures were found and shown side-by-side. The skulduggery is obvious:
https://twitter.com/RevolutionMonk/status/713284789328023552
Now we have a prevalent scenario where-in social media is photoshopping and misrepresenting mainstream media content and misleading general public with malafide intent. And in this case, as we have seen, the IT cell of the grand old party of India is involved.
What more, they have not deleted the tweet (at the time of filing this report, which is a day after the lies were caught) even after it was proved beyond doubt that the picture was fake and data invented. They can’t even claim that they too were victim of wrong information, because in that case they should delete the tweet after knowing the truth.
Will any action be taken against such crooks? Will any debates be held in TV studios asking for accountability from Congress and their IT warriors? Will eminent journalists on social media vocally call out such lies spread by the Congress IT Cell?