'On January 15, 2020, Amit Malviya, national in-charge of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) IT cell, shared a video of a random group of persons insinuating that the women of Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh are protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) for money. His allegation was found baseless by a collaborative Alt News-Newslaundry investigation. But this hardly discouraged Malviya... Two days hence, he shared a photograph of an elderly man eating biryani at Shaheen Bagh.
'...Malviya’s misleading tweets are not limited to Shaheen Bagh. Alt News has been monitoring his social media feeds for a while and has found that he repeatedly uses misinformation in an attempt to discredit individuals, communities, opposition parties, leaders and social movements. Since he is the official head of the BJP’s online propaganda machine, the misinformation promoted by Malviya has a dangerous ripple effect. His false claims are echoed by party members and supporters of the BJP, giving rise to large-scale misinformation campaigns...'
'On January 15, Bharatiya Janata Party social media head Amit Malviya tweeted a video of a group of men talking about the Shaheen Bagh protesters. They alleged that women participating in the sit-in protest are being paid to demonstrate against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens. A man in the video further claimed that the protest was “sponsored” by the Congress party. Malviya reiterated the claim in his tweet... Times Now broadcast the video tweeted by Malviya with the disclaimer that it “does not vouch for the authenticity of the video”.
'Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday made a reference to Harappan-era seals in her Budget speech, claiming one of them contained the word “sreni”. Social media users soon pointed out that the Harappan script had not yet been deciphered. Trade and commerce have existed in India since the Harappan civilisation, Sitharaman said in her speech to drive home the point how entrepreneurship has always been there in the country. She referred to the Indus Valley Civilisation as the “Saraswati Sindhu Civilisation”, and claimed that the word “Sreni [guilds]” was written on a Harappan seal.
'For each pro-Congress account spreading propaganda and fake news on Twitter, there are 120 doing the same for the BJP, a study has claimed. The study has been conducted by a user of the social media portal Reddit who goes by the username ‘/u/onosmosis’. The user claims to have analysed lakhs of unverified Twitter accounts to identify trends in online misinformation. Conducted with the help of an algorithm, the study started by identifying around 4 lakh Twitter accounts with a clear political leaning.
'The man who opened fire at people protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act near the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi on Thursday afternoon had gone live on Facebook minutes before he pulled out his pistol. Selfie-footage posted by the assailant, who identifies himself as Rambhakt Gopal, shows him walking around the venue of the protest dressed in a black sleeveless bomber jacket and looking around furtively, as if trying to decide on his target.
'The management of a school in Bidar has been slapped with sedition charges after its students performed a drama against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) on Sunday. Shaheen Education Institute was on Monday booked under sections 124A (sedition), 504 (provoke breach of peace), 505(2) (statements promoting enmity), 153A (promoting communal hatred) and 34 (act done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC, while the FIR named the head of the school and its management as accused.
'Kailash Vijayvargiya, the national general secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, on Thursday said that the construction workers at his house had “strange eating habits” that aroused suspicions about their nationality, PTI reported. The labourers were only consuming poha, a popular dish made from flattened rice, Vijayvargiya said at a seminar on the Citizenship Amendment Act in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. “I suspected these workers were residents of Bangladesh,” he said. “Two days after I became suspicious, they stopped working at my house.”...'
'...For the uninitiated, Bagga has been notorious in the capital’s political firmament, fomenting trouble from place to place. In 2011, before he was officially part of the BJP, he led an organisation called the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena and attacked SC advocate Prashant Bhushan tweeting proudly: “"We hit Prashant Bhushan hard in his chamber in Supreme Court. If u will try to break my nation, I will break ur heads.” He had been detained for the incident.
'Two photographs of JNSU president Aishe Ghosh have been juxtaposed together to portray that she plastered different arms at different times. Thus suggesting that her injuries are fake. Ghosh was injured during violence in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) where masked goons attacked students on January 5-6. Shefali Vaidya was among those who made the allegation but later took it down... RSS-affiliated ABVP’s national organising secretary Ashish Chauhan also shared the images. His tweet, now deleted, was retweeted by Dr Vijay Chauthaiwale, in-charge of BJP’s foreign affairs department...
