New Delhi, Nov 27 (UNI) The Congress party on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party, accusing its leaders of “ignorance and blatant lies” in attempting to weaponise a technical glitch on the social media platform ‘X’ to divert attention from critical national issues.
Congress spokesperson and Chairperson of the Social Media and Digital Platforms, Supriya Shrinate, exposed the BJP’s hypocrisy, noting that the same technical error that led to various Congress leaders’ account locations being erroneously displayed outside India also affected accounts linked to the ruling party and its allies.
The controversy arose after a technical glitch on ‘X’ caused the locations of several accounts, including those of Congress leaders, to show as being outside the country. ‘X’ product head and the platform itself have already clarified that these location errors were due to technical malfunctions which are currently being rectified, citing reasons such as travel or temporary relocation.
Addressing a press conference Shrinate highlighted the sheer folly of the BJP’s attempts to create a nationalist controversy around the issue.
“The BJP’s purpose was to divert attention from various pressing issues in the country, and in the process, they tried to create an issue so foolishly,” she asserted.
She pointed out that the accounts of the BJP Gujarat were shown being operated from Ireland, the BJP’s favoured Adani Group’s account from Germany, Start Up India from Ireland, and DD News from the United States.
“Are they all also anti-national as the BJP has been accusing the Congress leaders of being anti-national, whose accounts were showing from different locations?” Shrinate sharply questioned, referencing the BJP’s rhetoric against opposition leaders whose accounts were similarly affected.
She further noted that leaders like Pawan Khera had already clarified their use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which can also be a cause for erroneous location display.
Shrinate argued that the entire controversy was a “silly attempt” to discredit legitimate questions and “divert the attention” from serious issues by using the admitted technical glitch.
She highlighted the alarming issue of 26 BLOs (Booth Level Officers) dying in the last 20 days due to work stress from the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. She also cited the serious allegation from a dead BLO’s family that he was under pressure to delete names of OBC voters from the rolls.
“The BJP was trying to use this issue to divert attention from the ‘vote-chori’ (vote theft) in Bihar,” she alleged, referencing the unprecedented 93 per cent strike rate of the alliance in power for twenty years.
She further quoted the family members of Nitin Yadav, a BLO from Gonda, who claimed he was being forced to remove OBC voters. Shrinate also brought up the “massive discrepancies” in Maharashtra local bodies elections, citing reports of eleven lakh duplicate votes in Mumbai alone, 600 voters registered at two tuition centres, and 3,500 voters with fake addresses in a single ward.
“All this while Election Commission and Gyanesh Gupta staying conspicuously quiet,” she said, underscoring the party’s belief that the ‘X’ controversy was a desperate smokescreen.
