The Congress has urged Twitter to “permanently suspend” the accounts of BJP president J.P. Nadda and some of his party colleagues on the charge of circulating forged documents, spreading misinformation and trying to create disharmony in society, at a time Delhi police are yet to register an FIR into the Covid “toolkit” controversy.

In a letter to the microblogging site, Congress research department chairman Rajeev Gowda and social media chief Rohan Gupta said: “As Twitter’s own policy and rules seek to discourage deceptive/synthetic/manipulated media that are likely to cause harm, we humbly request you to immediately remove the tweets (connected with the toolkit controversy) or any other such material on the Twitter platform. Also, you are requested to carry out a detailed probe on the subject matter and permanently suspend the Twitter accounts of the named individuals.”

The letter named Nadda, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, Union minister Smriti Irani and general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santosh. The Congress said these politicians “are habitual of manufacturing forged content and misusing the Twitter platform for disseminating the same”.

The Congress said the BJP leaders had “in a planned criminal conspiracy prepared a forged letterhead of the Congress research department and thereafter printed certain mischievous, false and fabricated content on the same for the purpose of dissemination through their official Twitter handles with clear intent to cause social unrest, communal disharmony in order to fuel hate and escalate violence in various parts of India”.

The Congress has accused the BJP of illegally obtaining an Opposition party document on the Central Vista project, forging the letterhead and adding fabricated materials to it to give the impression that the Congress was trying to malign the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over alleged pandemic mismanagement.