The @BJP4Karnataka handle has been making news since the start of the anti-CAA protests. The @BJP4Karnataka handle has been making news since the start of the anti-CAA protests.

The past month has been eventful for the Twitter handle of the BJP’s Karnataka unit. One reason for the change in @BJP4Karnataka is believed to be the new man at its helm, Vinod Krishnamurthy, a software engineer with an MBA from the UK with close links to national organising secretary B L Santhosh.

The @BJP4Karnataka handle has been making news since the start of the anti-CAA protests. On the day of the Delhi elections, February 8, it tweeted a video of women in burqas queuing up with voter ID cards, mocking the anti-CAA protesters for their resolve to not show their papers. After the tweet was reported to Twitter by many as offensive, including by the state Congress, it was removed and the handle blocked for a day.

Returning to Twitter the next day, the Karnataka BJP quipped, “Dear Friends, It is unfortunate that Our Handle was locked out by Twitter for speaking the truth about Liberals. We will not step back in our efforts to bring out the truth…”

“Kaagaz Nahi Dikayenge Hum” ! ! ! Keep the documents safe, you will need to show them again during #NPR exercise.#DelhiPolls2020 pic.twitter.com/bEojjeKlwI — BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) February 8, 2020

Krishnamurthy maintains that @BJP4Karnataka tweets have not been offensive, accusing “a Leftist environment” and journalist Rana Ayyub, who was among the first to object to the February 8 post, of making it “seem like a threat”.

The software engineer took as Karnataka BJP social media head two months ago, replacing another IT entrepreneur, Balaji Srinivas. Krishnamurthy came in as a part of the team of new BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel, who took over in August 2019 from B S Yediyurappa. Like Krishnamurthy, Kateel is considered close to Santhosh.

Noting that his appointment coincided with start of the anti-CAA protests, Krishnamurthy said he had been associated with the BJP for seven years, especially its south India social media operations. “We put out a tweet saying voter IDs could be useful for the NPR exercise… The Leftist environment was troubled by it the most… Almost 200 to 300 people from the Leftist enviroment wrote to Twitter. When such a large numbers of complaints are given, Twitter automatically blocks an account for 12 hours. So it was blocked and later they released it,” he said.

Krishnamurthy added that they followed a “standard vetting process”. “On general posts we have freedom, like if the state president is busy at a programme. But in case of specific tweets, we get clearances.”

BJP leaders in Karnataka, however, admitted there was no strict vetting of the tweets by the social media unit, except some ground rules requiring controversial ones to be cleared by a general secretary in charge.

A former member of the BJP media unit in Karnataka said, “When Srinivas headed the social media unit until November 2019, general secretary Arvind Limbavalli (an MLA) was overall in-charge. Since the change in the party leadership, these posts have changed and it is not clear who is in-charge now.”

By all aspects Sri @OmarAbdullah looks very happy and relaxed. There are no signs whatsoever of being detained. Best news is that entire Jammu and Kashmir is happy and celebrating . . . Why are you mourning Miss @BDUTT ? ? ? https://t.co/0fWhuZjRur — BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) January 25, 2020

A BJP functionary said, “The social media unit is handled by loyalists of certain leaders and does not reflect the party’s view but more of the leader… Vinod is loyal to Santhosh and the social media unit reflects that.”

Incidentally, Santhosh has himself courted controversy with his tweets, including one in which he hinted at meddling in the US elections after Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders mentioned the Delhi riots. Santhosh later deleted the Tweet.

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