The Congress, which is a part of the ruling JMM-led alliance govenrnment along with the RJD in Jharkhand, filed FIR an against the BJP central leadership on Wednesday, accusing it of propagating a “fake toolkit” to defame the grand old party, a day after senior members of the saffron camp released a string of documents bearing the AICC letter head on social media.
The state Congress unit, followed similar action taken by the All India Congress Committee in Delhi and lodged an FIR against the BJP’s central leadership at Ranchi’s Kotwali police under different provisions of Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act.
Congress spokesperson Alok Kumar Dubey in his formal complaint named BJP national president J.P Nadda, national spokesperson Sambit Patra, union minister Smriti Irani, party general secretary B.L. Santosh & others.
“Through the present complaint, we seek to register an FIR against the aforesaid persons & other such people for forging the letterhead of AICC Research Department and printing false and fabricated content on the same, in order to share the forged/ BJP manufactured document from their verified twitter handles and other social media platforms, with the intent to create communal disharmony and civil unrest in the country among individuals, escalating violence, fueling hate and spreading fake news. The hidden agenda of this team of fraudsters was to divert the attention from the Modi Government’s mammoth failure in providing necessary aid to the people of India, amidst the current pandemic,” read the letter.
Several members of the Union cabinet, BJP chief ministers and senior ministers shared the document, which they labelled the “Congress toolkit”, arguing that the Opposition party was engaged in maligning the country and the Prime Minister.
The document contains topics on which the Opposition party can corner the Prime Minister, such as lack of transparency on PM-CARES Fund or the decision to spend thousands of crores on the Central Vista project during the pandemic; and how to highlight the service of the Youth Congress and reach out to the media and intellectuals.
BJP leaders claimed that news reports questioning the Modi government’s role in tackling the pandemic, the criticism for allowing the Kumbh Mela and praise for the Youth Congress’s efforts to help the Covid-affected were all stage-managed.
Countring this, the AICC lodged a police complaint in Delhi against BJP president J.P. Nadda and several of his colleagues, accusing them of forgery with the intent to divert attention from the “mammoth failure” of the Narendra Modi government in handling the pandemic.