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In an attempt to build public opinion against farmers’ long march to Mumbai, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media supporters were up to their usual tricks. The 22 page Google document provided tweet templates to the BJP supporters and was circulated on the party’s WhatsApp group.
A screencast video of the document can be seen below:
Even as thousands of farmers were on the streets to press their demands in an unprecedented rally, #KisanThanksDevendra was the hashtag planned to initiate a fake Twitter trend showing an overwhelming support for the Fadnavis government.
Clearly rattled by this show of strength, the IT cell’s social media strategy involved singing praises of the Fadnavis government, maligning the opposition and discrediting the farmers’ march. Some of the sample tweets were as follows:
Alt News spotted a copy of the Google Doc circulating in a WhatsApp group of BJP supporters and decided to counter it on Twitter in a series of tweets.
Soon other Twitter users caught on to mock this attempt of the IT cell. In a hilarious turn of events, #KisanThanksDevendra became a joke on Twitter. The trend was hijacked by those sharing jokes and memes about it. The top retweets were for the tweets of Alt News founders exposing the fake trend.
At least two of the people accessing the document and tweeting using the #KisanThanksDevendra hashtag were familiar names – Karan Sharma with Twitter handle @IKaransharma27 and Mehul Jain with Twitter handle @TigerNamo.
While Mehul Jain had the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister in his office, Karan Sharma describes himself as a RSS Swayamsevak and is followed by the PM on Twitter.
(This article was first published on Alt News and has been republished here with permission)
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