Indian National Congress on Wednesday denied links to a political data analytics firm that has been accused of stealing data to allegedly influence electoral process while accusing the BJP of having availed its services in 2010.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala says – Indian National Congress or the Congress president Rahul Gandhi has never used or never hired the services of a company called Cambridge Analytica. It is a fake agenda and white lie being dished out by Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Surjewala said- BJP’s factory of fake news has produced one more fake product today. It appears fake statements, fake press conferences and fake agendas have become everyday character of BJP and its ‘Lawless’ Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
He added – Cambridge Analytica’s linked website shows that in 2010 its services were used by BJP-JD(U). Firm’s Indian partner Ovlene Business Intelligence (OBI) is being run by BJP ally’s MP’s son. OBI company’s services were used by Rajnath Singh in 2009.
“We checked the profile of Himanshu Sharma, vice president of OBI on LinkedIn. He mentioned there that the company handled four election campaigns of ruling BJP.” Surjewala alleged.
Sharma’s LinkedIn profile mentions the following achievements of OBI: Managed four election campaigns successfully for the ruling party-BJP achieve its target of 272+ by managing Cell Centre Management Project Profiling of each and every volunteer/supporter who had extended his support to get involved in our Mission 272+, and confidentially maintaining the database provided to BJP candidate as an additional support for national elections and state elections of Haryana, Jharkhand and Delhi.
Cambridge Analytica has been in the eye of the storm following an investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 which alleged that the firm mined personal information of Facebook users for political purposes. UK authorities are also investigating reports that CA used data harvested from the social networking site in the voter research it conducted for US President Donald Trump during the 2016 elections campaign.
