Bots retweeting, block them: Himanta Biswa Sarma to Twitter

Himanta Biswa Sarma. (Express Photo by DASARATH DEKA/File)

Senior BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday dashed off a letter to Twitter requesting immediate steps to block “any computer or software-mediated intervention of bots” that has been retweeting one of his tweets.

“Some very unlikely characters have started to retweet one of my recent tweets on my Twitter handle @himantabiswa, and in large numbers. This most certainly is not organic and I hugely suspect that some software application including deployment of bots have been attached to my handle,” Sarma, in a letter to Twitter India, Gurgaon, said.

“This computer-mediated onslaught on my handle is definitely a ploy, I highly suspect, possibly by my political opponents to defame me,” he wrote.

Though he did not specifically mention the retweet of his particular tweet, his post showed two such retweets of the same tweet beside his letter, in one of which he had made a remark about Pidi, the pet dog of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. Sarma had on October 29 made a comment on Rahul Gandhis’ dog on Twitter, in which he said, “Sir @OfficeOfRG, who knows him (the dog) better than me. Still remember you busy feeding biscuits 2 him while We wanted to discuss urgent Assam issues.”