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BJP sweep in Sangli has left Congress ecosystem stunned in Maharashtra

Abhishek Banerjee
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BJP sweep in Sangli has left Congress ecosystem stunned in Maharashtra

Around the beginning of 2017, just before the big round of municipal elections in 10 cities of Maharashtra, the Modi posters began to disappear or at least became fewer in number. A new BJP poster was making its appearance, with the face of Devendra Fadnavis along with the words “Ha shabda mazaa aahe” (this is my promise). The young CM was taking full charge of the massive state, second largest in India by a number of Lok Sabha seats. In the elections that followed, the BJP shone bright, winning an outright majority in 8/10 cities (most prominently Pune) and holding the Shiv Sena to a draw in Mumbai.

What was amazing was that in most of these corporations, the BJP had stormed into power from nowhere, oftentimes starting with literally 0 seats in the last election. It was clear that a BJP wave was building up.

At that time the opposition prayed that the BJP wave would be limited to cities. First of all, that is cold comfort for the opposition anyway, since Maharashtra is heavily urbanized. If there is a BJP wave in the cities, it means BJP will win at least half of the 48 Lok Sabha seats already.

But it was one thing for a BJP storm to seize Pune or Pimpri Chinchwad from NCP hands. Pune is a metropolis in waiting, with a mentality not very different from Mumbai. In fact, the real surprise is how a regressive regional party like NCP held on to Pune for that long.

It is quite another thing for the BJP to go into the Congress fortress in Sangli and toss the Congress aside like a toy. This time the BJP won a handy 41 of the 78 seats yesterday, kicking the Congress out of power.

What was the position in 2013? The BJP had ZERO seats. The Congress-NCP had 60/78. And you know what? Congress-NCP didn’t even fight together in 2013 because that is how confident Congress was in its fortress.

This time, however, the Congress was allied with NCP. And the BJP was fighting alone, without Shiv Sena. Honestly, if you had asked me yesterday, I would have said BJP has no chance at all in Sangli. That it would have been lucky to win 1-2 seats.

Because that is what the traditional wisdom would say. But it seems traditional wisdom is not working any more in Maharashtra. Which is awesome!

Something is happening in Maharashtra. There appears to be a churn and it is coming to the surface now.

For those who may not be familiar with Maharashtra politics, it is hard to put in words what kind of seat Sangli is. It’s a Lok Sabha seat that Congress never lost since independence until the Modi wave of 2014. Four years away from the enthusiasm of that famous summer, it would seem that Congress would easily take back its biggest strongholds. But that’s not happening.

There are two things that need to be emphasized here:

(1) We cannot forget that Congress is incredibly powerful in Maharashtra. Except for four years of Shiv Sena, the Congress has always ruled Maharashtra. It’s entire ecosystem and cadre structure is intact, except for the Mumbai-Thane region. Once you go out of Mumbai-Thane, the hinterlands of Maharashtra are full of seats like this: Sangli, Kolhapur, Karad, Satara … Congress strongholds where no other party could dream of winning since independence.  If Congress cannot recover in these places, believe me  … they cannot recover anywhere on the map of India.

(2) Local elections in Maharashtra are incredibly important. The state is run by local satraps and power is won by accumulating support from them, bit by bit, from one corporation to the next. If you remember the 15 years of Cong-NCP rule, you will see that the CM was always a local satrap himself who had won the support of his peers, with no pan-Maharashtra profile and mostly disposable in the larger scheme of things. Ashok Chavan was really the zamindar of Nanded. The Shiv Sena’s antics are all about their control of Mumbai’s BMC and of Thane Municipal Corporation. Even a guy like Raj Thackeray was kept relevant due to his control over Nashik until BJP ousted him from there in 2017.

This means that even a cooperative election is important in Maharashtra: because the tobacco and sugar barons control half the politics.

For what its worth, the BJP also handily won Jalgaon yesterday, picking up 57 out of 75 seats. The BJP was always expected to win in Jalgaon, but perhaps not by such a landslide.

Politics in Maharashtra is entering a very interesting phase.

(1)  The Maratha reservation morchas are at their peak right now … and the BJP still won a “near impossible” seat like Sangli in the heart of Maratha territory. It must be noted that demand for “Maratha reservation” also contains a surreptitious demand for Muslim reservation. Check their list of demands. This was the Congress’ M^2-strategy for Maharashtra: Maratha + Muslim. And on paper, it seems good enough to destroy the BJP.

Perhaps it is too early to celebrate, but there is now reason to believe that the Maratha card is not working. People are seeing through this. They are seeing that Congress sided with Marathas against Dalits in 2017, then sided with Dalits against Marathas in Jan 2018 and is now siding again with Marathas against Dalits. In other words, their only aim is to burn Maharashtra.

This is an incredibly rare phenomenon in Indian politics. Reservation always works to sway Hindu voters. Incredibly enough, Maharashtra is seeing through the game and that’s just wonderful. Perhaps this is due to the heavily urbanized nature of Maharashtra.

(2) Let us talk about CM Devendra Fadnavis. They have tried to hobble him in every possible way with daily caste agitations. Seems Fadnavis keeping his head down, staying humble and focusing on performance/delivery has struck a chord with the masses. The constant vilification coming from Shiv Sena has also made him out to be a victim.

By the way, the Sena couldn’t win a single seat in Sangli yesterday and lost miserably to BJP in Jalgaon.

For the first time in decades, a pan-Maharashtra leader could be emerging, with an image of his own that cuts across castes and regions of the state. This year Fadnavis celebrated Ambedkar’s birthday by giving electricity connections to numerous Dalit majority villages. The Congress celebrated Ambedkar Jayanti by raising JNU style slogans. Guess which one Dalits liked better?

In 2016, Fadnavis brought relief to parched Latur (another traditional Congress stronghold) by means of the very visible water train.

The rewards for the BJP were immediate. In April 2017, the BJP won Latur’s civic body. Possibly the first time since independence that a non-Congress party would rule there. And then Fadnavis made sure that things were planned well enough so that the need for an emergency water train would not arise in 2017. This is called performance. His Jal Yukt Shivir is a runaway hit in rural areas. These are simple tricks to reduce the misery of people … measures that should have been taken 40 years ago. What did Congress have to offer as a counter? Caste!!!! But, guess what? You can’t drink caste. But you can drink the water that has been harvested in your local Jal Yukt Shivir.

As Fadnavis said in his banners, “Ha shabda mazaa aahe.“

Congress pays tribute to Kishore Kumar, who was intolerantly banned by its govt during emergency

OpIndia Staff
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Congress pays tribute to Kishore Kumar, who was intolerantly banned by its govt during emergency

The Congress party’s official social media account which has goofed up numerous times in the past, was in the news again, when it decided to wish legendary singer Kishore Kumar on his birth anniversary:


In the tweet the party also shared a clip of his song, Pyar Bantte Chalo and claimed that it was expressing the hope that may love triumph irrespective of someone’s individual identity.

Ironically this “love” which the Congress is now professing, seemed non-existent during the Indira Gandhi imposed emergency when it banned Kumar’s songs.

As reported by the Indian Express, the then Information and Broadcasting minister VC Shukla had banned Kumar’s songs from being played on All India Radio and Doordarshan during the Indira Gandhi imposed emergency – as he had refused to perform at a Congress rally in Mumbai. This ban was imposed on 4 May 1976 till the end of emergency.

Such a dichotomy was not lost on social media users who proceeded to criticise the Congress for its hypocrisy:


Incidentally this particular gaffe seems to have become an annual affair for the Congress party, as it had shared a similar message last year for the singer, which also resulted in it getting slammed on social media.

Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s involvement in 5000 cr bank fraud case resurfaced as ED tightens investigation

Jhankar Mohta
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Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s involvement in 5000 cr bank fraud case resurfaced as ED tightens investigation

A Delhi court remanded a man named Ranjit Malik, alias Jonny, in the one-day custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), for his involvement in 5000 crore bank fraud case for allegedly sending Rs 25 lakh cash to the official residence of a senior Congress leader, Ahmed Patel.

The ED produced Jonny before the duty magistrate, Bhavna Kalia, who granted his custody to the agency for a day, despite the ED pleading for a 15-day custody of the man saying he was required to be questioned in connection with the case and the transactions, and directed it to produce him before the court concerned.

According to the investigation carried out by the ED, Malik had sent through a courier, named Rakesh Chandra 25 lakh to 23, Mother Teresa Crescent, which is the official address of Congress leader Ahmed Patel.

Earlier too, Sunil Yadav, employed by the Sandesara group, which is being investigated by ED for money laundering, had alleged the involvement of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel, his son, Faisal Patel, and his son-in-law, Irfan Siddiqui in the same, through his written statement to the directorate.

Yadav in his written statement to the ED confessed that he had handed over cash to Faisal Patel’s chauffeur and that the cash was to be delivered to Ahmed Patel’s son “on behalf of Chetan Sandesara”. Yadav’s written statement also mentions Chetan Sandesara, one of the owners of Sterling group, involved in the money laundering, would frequently visit Ahmed Patel’s residence (23 Mother Crescent, New Delhi) and that Patel’s residence would be described as ‘Headquarters 23’ by Sandesara. Siddiqui, Yadav said, would be referred as J2 and Faisal Patel as J1 by Sandesara.

The seized materials, telephonic chats, and bank account statements contain a lot of financial transactions including cash transactions revealed connections of Sterling Biotech group in this money laundering case.

The chargesheet, filed before Additional Sessions Judge Satish Arora, has accused the company of taking loans of over Rs 5,000 crore from a consortium led by Andhra Bank and diverting the same for personal use. The loans later turned into non-performing assets. As per the chargesheet, owners of Sterling Group, Nitin Sandesara, and Chetan Sandesara, had floated close to 300 shell companies to fraudulently move and layer the loan money abroad.

The ED registered a money laundering case in this instance after taking cognizance of an earlier CBI FIR. and put more than 50 foreign bank accounts and several other assets and properties situated abroad, related to the Sterling Group under the scanner,” the agency said.

The CBI had last year booked Sterling Biotech, its directors Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara, Dixit, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara and Vilas Joshi, chartered accountant Hemant Hathi, Garg and some unidentified persons in connection with the alleged bank fraud case. The FIR alleged that the total pending dues of the group companies were Rs 5,383 crore as on December 31, 2016.

Though the ED has been probing the case extensively and trying to dig out as many swindlers involved in this 5000 crores bank fraud case, present development might further help to dig out many hidden crummy facts, which the directorate are carefully inspecting.

Ex-Congress and TRS MP’s son booked under Nirbhaya Act for sexually assaulting 11 nursing students

OpIndia Staff
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Ex-Congress and TRS MP’s son booked under Nirbhaya Act for sexually assaulting 11 nursing students

The Nizamabad police registered a case under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, (Nirbhaya Act) 2013 against the former Congress leader and currently TRS Rajya Sabha member D. Srinivas’s son, D. Sanjay, former mayor, here on Friday.

According to the Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Nizamabad North, they received a complaint from 11 students of Shaankary Nursing College, which is run by Srinivas’ son Sanjay. The complaints came to light when the girls and their families approached the Progressive Organisation of Women (POW) in Nizamabad to file a complaint.

On Thursday, POW reached out to the State Home Minister and State Director General of Police to take immediate action against the accused, following which, Home Minister Naini Narsimha Reddy directed DGP Mahender Reddy to accept a formal complaint by the POW and look into the matter.

The case has been registered against Sanjay, under sections 354, 506, 509 and 342 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Speaking to The News Minute, Sandhya, an activist and POW leader said, “Sanjay is quite notorious and there already are pending sexual harassment cases against him. There are 13 girls in the first year of BSc Nursing at that college in all, and 11 of them approached us at our office and gave a complaint against Sanjay.” They also alleged that Sanjay recently sexually abused a girl student who met with an accident and was seeking his permission to go home.

Responding to the sexual harassment allegations against him, Dharmapuri Sanjay, ex-Mayor of Nizamabad city, on Friday said that the allegations are “politically motivated” and aimed at “targeting” his family. He went on to justify by saying, “There is no truth in the allegations against me. I didn’t go to Samkri College and I don’t have any relationship with the college. I don’t even know who is studying in the college. I have a wife and children. I’m not in any live-in relationship with anyone. Someone told those students to speak against me and make these allegations.”

The allegations surfaced between the broiling political rift TRS has been facing. Nearly a month ago, Nizamabad MP Kavitha with her allies had complained against D Srinivas to party chief alleging that he was indulging in anti-party activities. It is also rumoured that Aravind, another son of D Srinivas, is aspiring to become an MP from BJP Nizamabad. The party accused him of sabotaging the party to ensure his son’s political career flourishes.

Contrary to popular media narrative, was ABP ‘journalist’ made to leave because he peddled fake news?

OpIndia Staff
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Contrary to popular media narrative, was ABP ‘journalist’ made to leave because he peddled fake news?

Twitter has been abuzz recently over the resignation of two ABP News journalists who, according to liberals, were forced to quit because of a program critical of Prime Minister Modi’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’.


Apart from the Congress mouthpiece, the allegations against the channel were also fueled by AAP-leaning YouTuber, Dhruv Rathee, who dubbed it an ‘undeclared emergency’.


Apart from people with political affiliations, liberal media outlets also insinuated that the Modi government had a role in arm-twisting ABP News to force their employees to quit.

The Print ran a report with the headline, “Top ABP editors quit, staff, say Modi govt may have ‘arm-twisted channel for criticism’”, where it quoted sources who claimed that the BJP is responsible for the journalists quitting ABP News.

The Leftist propaganda website, The Wire, which has spread misinformation on several previous occasions and is currently fighting a lawsuit for an alleged defamatory report on Jay Shah, son of BJP President Amit Shah, also a published a report which made similar insinuations.

Anyone who has been following politics in recent years, even remotely, will be aware that the media is overly invested in opposing the NDA government at the Center and harbours a visceral grudge against the Modi government. As such, they cannot be trusted with making an objective evaluation of circumstances at hand, especially given their dubious track record. The particular program in contention which so ‘infuriated’ the Bharatiya Janata Party allegedly has another side as well which liberal media and opposition parties have conveniently ignored.

In the particular program in question, Punya Prasun Bajpai asserts that their correspondent had gotten in touch with a female farmer who, when asked by the Prime Minister if her income had doubled, had answered in the affirmative. According to the program, the women were instructed by people from Delhi on how to answer the PM and when the correspondent asks the woman if her income had indeed doubled through rice farming, she had replied that it hadn’t. Soon, the video clip of that section of the program went viral on social media and it was even shared by Congress President on Twitter.


The narrative peddled by Bajpai’s program, that the BJP had doctored the woman’s interaction with the Prime Minister to boost its credentials, was soon busted by MyNation. The woman, Chandramani Kaushik, clarified that she had doubled her income not through rice farming but by processing the pulp of sitafal. In the interaction that was uploaded in video format by MyNation, it can be seen clearly that Kaushik never claimed that her income had doubled by sowing paddy. Even in Bajpai’s program, it wasn’t Kaushik who had claimed that a team from Delhi had instructed her on how to respond to the Prime Minister’s question but the village Sarpanch was the one who made the claims.

In light of the dubious nature of Bajpai’s program in question, it is unclear as to whether he was made to leave because of interference from the BJP or simply because the channel was unhappy with the Fake News that he had peddled and the officials were worried about the damage to their credibility. Vested interests would obviously have us believe that Narendra Modi himself is responsible for irrelevant journalists being made to quit, however, it appears that sheer incompetence on the part of the journalists may have contributed to their fate.

Wikipedia page of Tripura CM vandalized to show him as a Bangladeshi immigrant

OpIndia Staff
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Wikipedia page of Tripura CM vandalized to show him as a Bangladeshi immigrant

The NRC draft of Assam has created quite a flutter in India with the opposition parties trying to fear monger about 40 lakh people not featuring in the list, even though, the draft is by no standard a final one.

Supporters of opposition parties have now resorted to blatant lies and concoctions. A tweet surfaced today that enquired whether the information on Biplab Deb, Tripura Chief Minister’s Wikipedia page was true. The page had been edited to reflect that Deb was born in Bangladesh.


Upon investigation, it has been revealed that the Wikipedia page of Biplab Deb has been consistently vandalised recently that the misinformation of him being born in Bangladesh was also a result of vandalism.

When one accessed the edit history of the Wikipedia page, a comparison between revisions makes it evident that originally, the page read that Biplab Deb was born in Tripura, and only on 2nd August 2018, was the malicious edit of him born in Bangladesh added.

The edit history of the Wikipedia page shows that the vandalism was done from an IP address 117.194.210.250, which belongs to Kolkata. It should be noted that IP addresses can be spoofed too, but normally Wikipedia employs tools to stop such elements from vandalising their pages, so in all probability, someone in Kolkata carried out this vandalism. One wonders who in West Bengal will be motivated to undertake this vandalism related to an issue in Assam. Perhaps West Bengal’s Chief Minister’s passionate statements on Assam’s NRC gives a hint.

The Wikipedia page of Biplab Deb has been constantly vandalised since 2nd August 2018 as evidenced by the edit history of the page.

After consistent vandalism of the page on the Tripura CM, Wikipedia has locked the page to stop vandalism. The current version reads that Deb was born in Tripura.

After dismantling a toy prototype, AAP MLA now wants to take his great EVM hacking show to Africa

Sanghamitra
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After dismantling a toy prototype, AAP MLA now wants to take his great EVM hacking show to Africa

Saurabh Bharadwaj, the AAP MLA who did a grand show of ‘hacking an EVM’ by opening and playing with a toy prototype machine inside Delhi assembly, is now keen on taking his ‘hacking’ talent across the globe. The MLA, whose affinity towards science fiction was confirmed when he had blamed the death of homeless persons in Delhi on intoxication rather than the coldwave, has now decided to go global. He Tweeted yesterday that he had met the opposition leader of a country called ‘Bostwana’ (Botswana) and assured them that he will help them prove the vulnerability of EVMs in their highest court.


He had quoted a Tweet from Vinod Kapri, who had shared an article from the Economic Times which stated that the Election Commission of India has deferred from making a commitment to Botswana because the 2019 general elections are looming close.

Further, the article stated that the ECI will not be sharing the same EVM with Botswana but will be designing a different machine for them like they had done previously for Nigeria and Nepal.

As is usual with AAP and its leaders, a conspiracy theory that the ECI is not giving the EVMs because they can be hacked to ‘vote for Lotus’ was soon woven and floated. The “EVMs hacked” theory is being floated by AAP regardless of Karnataka results and the Punjab elections where Congress won. AAP seems to have even disregarded the Delhi assembly elections that got AAP 67 MLAs.

However, Bharadwaj’s claim was soon being discussed on social media and not in a very kind way.


It is notable here that none of the political parties took up the open challenge by the ECI to prove vulnerability in EVMs when it was to be officially done and demonstrated. Perhaps because floating conspiracy theories is far easier than actually proving them.

Rebel AAP MLA Kapil Mishra took a dig too.


Blaming EVMs for every lost election has become the easiest excuse for political parties. Despite the ECI explaining multiple times that tampering is not possible in EVMs, political parties never miss an opportunity to raise questions over a constitutional body and undermine the public mandate, insulting the very ethics of democracy bitterly everytime the results are not in their favour. A few vested interests have even tried to propagate the idea internationally and insult India’s firm democratic system.

A number of countries have shown interest in purchasing and adapting India’s EVMs into their national elections. The fact that in Botswana, the opposition party is appealing in their apex court against the use of the machines after they lost the elections, is hardly an issue to malign the ECI with, because, it is happening in India too. The ECI has already announced that all commission will ensure 100% coverage under VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) to ensure transparency and reliability.

Haryana police arrest Jaffar and Saahukar Khan, two of the eight accused in gang raping a pregnant goat

OpIndia Staff
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Haryana police arrest Jaffar and Saahukar Khan, two of the eight accused in gang raping a pregnant goat

The Haryana police on Thursday arrested two out of the eight individuals accused of gangraping a goat, Hindustan Times has reported. The two accused have been identified as Jaffar Khan and Saahukar Khan who are 21 and 22 years old respectively.

The goat, unfortunately, died following her ordeal, and as per a Nagina based veterinary surgeon, the cause of death was ascertained to be a brain haemorrhage.

As reported by us, the incident happened in Marodha village of Haryana’s Mewat, where the goat was gang-raped by eight accused on 25 July at an abandoned house. The accused were reported to have stolen the goat from its owner Aslup Khan, following which he started to search for her and stumbled upon the rape scene.

After catching them red-handed, the villagers beat up three of the eight accused and later let them go.

That was not all, and when he confronted the accused, one of them brazened things out by stating that they would do whatever they wanted and challenged the complainant to take any action he deemed fit.

Now the police have started to take action, and the two accused have been booked under section 377, which prohibits “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with man, woman or animal”.

As per the report, the accused are known criminals who have been involved in offences like multiple cattle and motorbike thefts, and as a result, were arrested more than once in the last three years.

Following the arrest, the owner of the goat also identified the arrested duo. The report quoted him as saying that the goat was like his child and he cannot forgive them for what the did. He also accused them of previously stealing four of his goats and demanded that they pay him a compensation of Rs 1 lakh.

NDTV does it again: Spreads lies about Guwahati boy being related to BJP MP and his NRC status

OpIndia Staff
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NDTV does it again: Spreads lies about Guwahati boy being related to BJP MP and his NRC status

In the last few days, the Assam NCR draft released by the government has created mayhem with a lot of controversies and misinformation encircling it. Amidst the tension, NDTV seems to have added fuel to the fire with its misreporting.

NDTV on 2nd August published and shared a news on their social channels with the headline, “Assam BJP Lawmaker’s Nephew Not On Citizen’s List, Says “It Happens.”

The story carried a photograph of BJP MP Bijoya Chakravarty and Jaydip Phukan, who is a resident of Guwahati.

source: Guwahati Plus News

The news published on NDTV mentions Jaydip as the MP’s ‘nephew’ and alleges that Jaydip’s name was not there in the NRC list since he was outside the country. The media house has also misquoted the MP as saying, “He has filed a review and he is getting it. Sometimes, it happens. It will be corrected.”

Jaydip, perplexed when came across the NDTV article, wrote a Facebook post that the news published by the media house was incorrect and a distortion of facts.

He went on to write that he is not the ‘nephew’ of MP Bijoya Chakravarty unlike what the media house had stated and that his name very much appears in the NCR draft alongside that of his family members.

He posted a screenshot of the NCR list showing his name (highlighted) in Bengali.

Source: Guwahati Plus News

While talking to Gplus News, Jaydip said that the error by the media house has caused him a lot of mental harassment. “I am not her nephew, I’m just a family friend. This image has been taken from my Facebook page without my permission. I’m badly humiliated since my nationality is being questioned,” said Jaydip.

Jaydip also wrote an official mail to NDTV, asking them to immediately retract his image from the irrelevant news published by them. He also tried to contact Sonal Mehrotra Kapoor, the writer of that particular article, to make the necessary corrections, but she was unavailable, said Jaydip.

Following is the screenshot of the official mail written by Jaydip to NDTV to rectify the incorrect article. In the email, he says that if corrective measures are not taken, he will be pursuing legal action against the channel.

Source: Guwahati Plus News

NDTV, famous for its tabloid journalism, has earlier too been slammed for misreporting and concocting false news. Not too long ago, on 6th July Opindia had brought forward yet another attempt by NDTV of fabricating information to sensationalize news. Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore had taken to Twitter to call out NDTV for using a misleading and unrelated picture for a story on child lifting hoax. The controversial media house used a violent mob’s image to depict an unrelated incident which occurred at Maharashtra’s Dhule.

How the hysteria about phones ‘hacked’ to add Aadhaar helpline number was spread

OpIndia Staff
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How the hysteria about phones ‘hacked’ to add Aadhaar helpline number was spread

Yesterday there was massive brouhaha on Social Media about the Aadhaar helpline number mysteriously appearing on people’s contact list. There were concerns raised about the security of data and how the UIDAI could possibly access people’s phonebooks and add the helpline number without requisite permission or authorisation.

Many took to Twitter including security experts to talk about the helpline number appearing on phones. The French security researcher claimed that it was “surprising and interesting” that the Aadhaar helpline number was added to people’s contact list.


Alderson had not made any assertions of phones being “hacked” to feed the helpline number. However, soon many journalists and news agencies jumped on the bandwagon and claimed that phones have been “hacked” nationally and that this was “bizarre”.

Times Now did a story that claimed that “Androids have been hacked nationally”.


Other journalists too, toed the same line.


Journalists spread rumours far and wide. Even Nidhi Razdan jumped into the mix to say that the numbers were appearing on iPhone as well.

This fear mongering also found its way to WhatsApp, ironically, right when the mainstream media has been discussing WhatsApp being used to spread panic.


Soon, UIDAI clarified that it had not asked any service provider or even Android to include the helpline numbers.


UIDAI also mentioned that the toll-free number was “invalid and outdated”.


Unfortunately, patience isn’t a virtue in journalism anymore and evidently, neither is research.

Upon investigating further, we found a tweet from a tech analyst and IT security expert from 2016 that claimed that phone makers were starting to hard code Aadhaar/UIDAI toll-free number in the contact list. He provided screenshots of the number being added on a MotoG4.


Turns out, the mass hysteria could have been averted if journalists had just done a little more research. Prasanna’s assertions back in 2016 turned out to be true when Google tweeted their clarification and apologised


The Google explanation said that since 2014, the then UIDAI helpline number and the 112 distress number was coded into the Setup Wizard of Andriod and have remained there since. Google assured that it was not the case of any unauthorised access and apologised for any inconvenience caused. They also reiterated that users can manually delete the number if they so choose and that they are working towards fixing the upcoming version of the Setup Wizard.

Eventhough UIDAI too issued an explanation, their statement was misinterpreted by some to mean that UIDAI was disowning the number and saying that it wasn’t a toll-free helpline of Aadhaar to begin with.


UIDAI had mentioned that their new helpline was active for the past 2 years and that the number which was fed into the phone was invalid and no longer in use. Considering Google mentioned that the number was coded into the phone in 2014, the fact that UIDAI now uses a different helpline number for the past 2 years is not far-fetched.

There were also people who complained of the number mysteriously appearing on the Apple phones.

While Google explained how it was coded into the Android devices, it also mentioned that since the numbers get listed in the contacts list, it can get transferred to any new device through contacts considering Android users use Gmail to sync their contacts.

While Google has published a detailed explanation, one would imagine that the fear mongering could have been averted by more research considering news of the numbers being coded into the phone were strife from at least 2016.

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