From a fatwa issued in a village for banning television and music to reports of idols being vandalised, the police in West Bengal are busy busting fake news even as the State battles the pandemic.
On Wednesday, the police tweeted a screen grab of a tweet by BJP MP Arjun Singh calling it misleading. “Misleading. Legal action is being taken. Please do not get carried away by provocative and mischievous posts,” they said. The tweet by the the Barrackpore MP referred to vandalism of a temple in Murshidabad district. The district police said a fire had damaged the temple.
Video by Pak.-born Canadian writer
This was not the only incident when the police had to turn to fact-checkers on communally sensitive posts. On August 28, they took note of a video tweeted by Pakistani-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah and called it fake. “A video clip from Bangladesh is being circulated intentionally to defame the West Bengal Administration. Legal action is being taken,” they tweeted from their official twitter account.
On August 19, the police posted screen grabs of reports published on several online portals calling them fake. “No TV, no music, no phones. A village in Mamata’s Bengal becomes India’s first Sharia compliant village,” the news report described as fake by the police read.
There have been various other incidents where the State and the Kolkata police had to go public from their social media handles calling the reports, photographs and videos ‘fake’ and warning that action will be taken for misleading posts.
Political observers feel that with the rise of “competitive communal politics” between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress, such posts will only increase till the State goes to polls in 2021.
Contest getting more pronounced
“There is also a competition going on where the IT cells of both the BJP and the TMC are trying to propagate fake reports and photos that serve their political interests. This phenomenon shows no signs of abating before the 2021 Assembly polls. Moreover, since the outbreak of the pandemic has put restrictions on political events, the contest on social media is getting more pronounced,” Biswanath Chakraborty, head of the department of political science at the Rabindra Bharati University, said.
Prof. Chakrbaroborty, also a well-known psephologist, said people should be cautious not to fall prey to them.