Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked the BJP while accusing it of being a lying factory after it was exposed how the Cambridge Analytica had allegedly plotted to defeat the Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
“BJP lying factory at work: Journalist set to break big story on how Cambridge Analytica (CA) was paid to infiltrate and sabotage the Congress in 2012. BJP rushes Cabinet Minister to lie and spin fake news:Congress worked with CA! Real story vanishes,” Gandhi tweeted.
BJP lying factory at work:
Journalist set to break big story on how Cambridge Analytica (CA) was paid to infiltrate and sabotage the Congress in 2012.
BJP rushes Cabinet Minister to lie and spin fake news:Congress worked with CA!
Real story vanishes.https://t.co/zMX7VJAAfa
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 23, 2018
Gandhi’s jibe was directed at the BJP Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who had demanded explanation from the Congress president to come clean on his party’s alleged links with the disgraced British company. We had revealed earlier this week how the Cambridge Analytica’s Indian arm, Ovleno Business Intelligence, had helped BJP in not just 2014 elections but also in four key assembly polls.
Ovleno Business Intelligence was founded by Amrish Tyagi, the son of former JDU Rajya Sabha MP KC Tyagi. Tyagi junior’s partner in another offshoot Indian firm of the CA, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) Pvt Ltd, was Avneesh Rai.
Rai has now sensationally revealed how the CA Chief Executive Alexander Nix had plotted to defeat the Congress in 2014 by deceiving his Indian partners including Rai.
Rai told NDTV that Nix visited India and held talks with his Indian associates on the pretext that they were going to submit a proposal to Gandhi pitching to secure a business from the party. This also included plans to gift a database of 5 Lok Sabha constituencies to Rahul Gandhi. These constituencies, Rai said, were Madhubani in Bihar, two in Rajasthan and two traditional Gandhi constituencies in Uttar Pradesh namely Rae Bareli and Amethi.
The data gathering was at its advanced stage Rai and his Indian partners kept meeting representatives from abroad. He said one of those international representatives was a lady of Indian origin, who may have been either a British or US citizen.
It was her comments that first raised his suspicion on Nix’s real motive. The Indian lady with foreign citizenship had introduced her as a having represented a mystery client. It implied that Nix had already secured a client but he chose to keep his Indian associates in the dark. Rai told NDTV that when he and his team questioned the woman, she confessed, “we are here to defeat the Congress.”
This was the first time Rai realised that he and his team had been taken for a ride by Nix and his colelagues. When he reportedly questioned Nix about it, he allegedly said, “I am here to make money.”
The stunning revelations by Rai will cause plenty of headache to the BJP, which was taking a moral high ground only a couple of days ago on stealing citizens’ data for electoral successes.