NEW DELHI: The BJP-Congress word war over data leak intensified on Tuesday after whistleblower Christopher Wylie told a British parliamentary panel that data mining firm
Cambridge Analytica had worked with
Congress in India, prompting the saffron party to immediately seek apology from its president
Rahul Gandhi.
"Today the whistleblower Christopher Wylie has confirmed Cambridge Analytica worked with Congress. This has exposed Rahul Gandhi who was denying all along. Congress and Gandhi must now apologise," Union IT and law minister
Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.
"This vindicates what we have been saying from day one. Rahul Gandhi has been trying to divert attention all these while," he said.
Congress challenged the Modi government to lodge an FIR against Cambridge Analytica and Facebook and work on the evidence that it gets, denying that it ever hired the controversial data mining firm for elections.
Responding to the row triggered by statements of the whistleblower in CA case in London, AICC spokesman
Randeep Surjewala said there was no truth in his claims that Congress had hired the company.
"An Indian citizen who was partner in OBI, Indian partner of CA,
Avneesh Rai, made a sensational disclosure that CA was hired by an NRI businessman in US to bring down the Congress government in 2014 by spreading misnformation and false surveys. But our perpetually lying law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad hid behind a bush and did not come forward to respond to the questions raised by Rai. It is preposterous to assume that a company that was being used by an NRI to bring down the Congress would be used by Congress in elections," Surjewala said.
Prasad dismissed Congress' allegation that BJP had used the firm's services, calling it a "pack of lies".
"Congress has had no truck with CA, never hired its services. BJP needs to answer who was this NRI who hired CA in the run-up to 2014 polls to bring down the Congress government," Surjewala said.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie 
