The Trinamool Congress IT cell finally started countering social media narratives and misinformation regarding the alleged rape and murder of a junior doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, after realising the BJP’s efforts to use the issue to create propaganda aimed at toppling the Mamata Banerjee government.

A leader in the ruling dispensation said the top party brass directed its IT cell and social media wing to activate its members to counter these narratives as soon as possible and to tag them for legal action by the police. Agovernment source said the police have also been summoning hundreds of individuals sharing misinformation on social media forlegal prohibition.

“Lakhs of social media posts filled with misinformation and falsehoods are aiding the BJP in creating a narrative and intensifying the demand for Mamata Banerjee’s resignation. Lakhs of people are sharing this misinformation without verifying the facts, helping the Opposition create an anti-government narrative,” said a seniorTMC leader.

Many within the party have questioned why, despite the issue becoming political, particularly after the CBI took over the case following a Calcutta High Court directive, the party leadership failed to assess that social media narratives played a pivotal role in provoking common people against the government.

“Nowadays, social media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion. The recent turbulence in Bangladesh leading to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government is the latest example of how a massive social media campaign can change an entire political perception,” said aTMC leader.

According to a source, TMC’s IT cell president Debangnshu Bhattacharya on Sunday night, convened a four-hour-long meeting where he instructed members to implement multi-faceted strategies to counter the anti-party social media campaign, particularly from the BJP. Apart from countering falsehood the IT cells have been circulating crimes involving women in BJP-ruled state.

“We have started identifying posts with misinformation on social media and are countering them from our handles. We are also flagging these malicious posts to the police by tagging the agency. Our wing has very limited resources to combat the BJP, which has activated all its IT cells across all 29 states to malign Bengal,” Bhattacharya, who is also a ruling party spokesperson, told this newspaper.

When asked why his department was slow to respond, the TMC’s IT cell head said they initially believed those misinformations were part of reactions from the public that would subside as the investigation progressed.

BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya, however, said that the narrative demanding the resignation of the chief minister was not set by the common peopleand result of TMC’s prolonged atrocity.

“People from across the party lines are turning up to protest together... the narrative is of the common people and no one can now stop this,” said Bhattacharya, who is also BJP’s chief spokespersonin Bengal.

A TMC leader mentioned that the party’s IT cell currently has only 34 members and has yet to form district-level committees, which is a very poor strength to fight the social media battle against the BJP, which has a giant setup across the country.

“The party’s senior leaders were also asked to activate themselves to counter falsehoods and anti-Mamata narratives on social media platforms,” the leader said.

TMC’s Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale claimed on his social media handle that the BJP has unleashed a ‘sinister toolkit’ with the agenda of ‘toppling’ the Mamata Banerjee government. He claimed that the BJP shifted the narrative from seeking justice to demanding Mamata’s resignation after the CBI took over the investigation.

BJP has unleashed a sinister toolkit in Bengal. The agenda is focused - to topple the Government. There’s an organized campaign being run by BJP by trending “Mamata Must Resign”. A genuine protest has been hijacked entirely by BJP.,” Gokhale wrote on his social media handle, claiming that 45 per cent of social media posts demanding Mamata’s resignation were generated from the USA.

TMC leader Kunal Ghosh also condemned the social media narrative by theOpposition against the state government and urged the CBI to wrap up its probe as soon as possible.