RAHUL GANDH

Is this BJP's 'attack plan' against Rahul on the Loya case?

Rahul in Amethi Rahul Gandhi in Amethi | PTI

Shortly after a bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday struck down pleas calling for an independent investigation into the death of judge B.H. Loya, a letter, purportedly from the BJP' parliamentary office, on targeting Congress chief Rahul Gandhi started circulating on various social media groups.

The letter, which is on the letterhead of the 'Bharatiya Janata Party in Parliament', is signed by Balasubrahamanyam Kamarsu, secretary in the BJP's parliamentary office. It carries instructions to BJP MPs to respond to the public and media in the aftermath of the Loya ruling. The instructions are centred around media strategies with the aim of spreading the message of getting Gandhi to apologise for having backed the pleas in the Loya case.

bjp-letter-supplied

Loya was hearing a fake encounter case in which BJP president Amit Shah was a suspect when the judge died in 2014.

In the letter, MPs are instructed to give bytes to TV channels, hold press conferences, retweet messages of central BJP leaders and disseminate the messages on WhatsApp and SMS. The MPs have also been asked to begin an SMS campaign on the Loya case pleas by portraying them as an attempt to malign Shah's name.

Congress media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted about the letter, calling it a “lame duck attempt by the vile BJP.”

While the BJP has not publicly commented on the veracity of the letter, its contents are not surprising given how much importance the party has given to its social media strategy.

In September last year, media agencies published information about a Google Doc used by the BJP to disseminate information on how ministers, MPs and other social media influencers were to send coordinated messages on social media about demonetisation.