Twitter gaffes pile up for Indian ministers

The ruling BJP employs a 'backroom army of trolls' to attack its rivals and run smear campaigns

NEW DELHI: Two Indian ministers were left red-faced on Wednesday after their attempts to glorify Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government on Twitter backfired spectacularly.

Critics have accused Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of running a relentless propaganda campaign on social media to increase its base of supporters.

Media reports have suggested the party employs a "backroom army of trolls" to attack its rivals and run smear campaigns.

On Wednesday Railway Minister Piyush Goyal shared a video purportedly showing India's first semi high-speed train zipping past at lightning speed, in order to trumpet Modi's pet "Make in India" initiative.

From India's longest rail-road bridge to first 14-lane expressway, watch the 10 landmark projects delivered by Govt. under the leadership of PM @NarendraModi

Share your suggestions for a better India

✓ Dial 6357 17 17 17
✓ Login https://t.co/Qh27XXjK2i#Modi4NewIndia pic.twitter.com/A8D9bTLu6i

— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) February 13, 2019

But it turned out to be a digitally altered video with the speed of the train enhanced by two times, prompting a backlash from Twitter users.

"Massive respect for Piyush Goyal. He just made the video 2X times faster and called it semi-high speed train when he could have made it 6X times faster and called it super high speed train," wrote one user.

Goyal has yet not commented on the video, which can still be seen on his timeline.

India's junior minister for finance and shipping, Pon Radhakrishnan also found himself at the receiving end after inadvertently criticising his own government in multiple tweets.

The minister retweeted posts with the hashtag #ModiforNewIndia without reviewing the content.



"#Modi4NewIndia Working for the middle class is low on the agenda of Modi govt," read one of his tweets.

"Modi govt started the process of online tracking of applications for environmental approvals, bringing down approval time from 600 days to 1,800 days," read another.

Hundreds of other accounts loyal to Modi and the BJP retweeted Radhakrishnan's posts verbatim. Some of the tweets have since been deleted.

Pratik Sinha, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt-News, on Wednesday said he had edited a shared Google document that exposed how the BJP's social media army churned out propaganda on a daily basis and was picked by government loyalists.

"How do you get a union minister to tweet what you want? Well, you go and edit the trending document made by BJP IT cell, and then you control what they tweet," wrote Sinha.

How do you get a Union Minister to tweet what you want? Well, you go and edit the trending document made by BJP IT cell, and then you control what they tweet. Thread.

Here's the video of this morning when their trending document got automagically updated :-)

1/n pic.twitter.com/6DLwDPg2CV

— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) February 13, 2019

Indian cyber experts have warned of a bitter social media war between the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress party headed by Rahul Gandhi ahead of a general election due by May.

India's right-wing groups recently accused Twitter of a "left-wing bias", saying the network was suspending accounts supportive of the BJP.

On Monday, a 31-member panel headed by a BJP lawmaker, summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear before it on February 25.