Following the 2019 general elections debacle, while Congress IT cell head Divya Spandana has disappeared into an abyss, the grand old party’s data analytics head Praveen Chakravarty is back in the news now as AICC Technology and Data Cell Chairman. The Congress has reorganised All India Congress Committee (AICC) Data Analytics Department as AICC Technology and Data Cell and made Chakravarty as its chairman.
Praveen Chakravarty is also the founding trustee of the faulty ‘hate tracker’ of the dubious data analytics website, IndiaSpend. Recently, The Wire and IndiaSpend’s factchecker journalist was caught trying to manipulate Dalit victims who were attacked by local Muslims to prove ‘no hate crime’.
After Congress’ humiliating defeat, Chakravarty was accused of misleading the then Congress President Rahul Gandhi and feeding him wrong information. In fact, the Congress also suspected that Praveen Chakravarty was a mole planted by the Modi government to ensure that Rahul Gandhi is fed misinformation in order to hand him a loss. In July, it was reported that the Congress will disband the data analytics department. And while the department has been disbanded, it has now been restructured as ‘technology and data cell’.
In June this year, it was reported that Chakravarty had allegedly conned Rahul Gandhi and set him up for the humiliating defeat. Rahul Gandhi was reportedly made to believe that the party will be securing somewhere between 164 and 184 seats in the elections. Congress, however, ended with 52 seats and Gandhi even lost the ‘family’ seat of Amethi which has elected many of his family members.
Praveen Chakravarty was responsible for handling the Shakti App on the basis of which inputs were given to Rahul Gandhi. He was evidently made to believe by Praveen Chakravarty that the party will be securing somewhere between 164 and 184 seats in the elections.
Rahul Gandhi, based on these superficial reports, seems to contacted his UPA allies M.K. Stalin, Akhilesh Yadav, Omar Abdullah, Sharad Pawar and Tejashwi Yadav amongst others, and offered to accommodate some of them in the next Cabinet. He had even reportedly obtained two letters from a senior legal luminary to enable him to stake claim to form the next government. The Congress party had even planned a victory procession to celebrate the exit of the BJP and had instructed a select few Delhi leaders to mobilise a crowd of nearly 10,000 people outside the AICC office on 24, Akbar Road.
And now, he is back in the Congress game as chairman of Congress’ ‘Technology and Data Cell’.