The aggressive stand taken by the Telangana police in cracking the “data theft” case involving a data analytics company to favour the Telugu Desam Party has shaken the base of the ruling party in Andhra Pradesh.
Apparently fearing that the data theft scam has damaged its electoral prospects in a big way, the TDP launched a counter-campaign against the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, alleging that the latter was targeting the TDP and the AP government only to help the YSR Congress party.
TDP president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has been attacking his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao and his son and TRS working president K T Rama Rao day in and day out, with an obvious intention of “exposing” the TRS nexus with the YSR Congress party, so as to exploit anti-Telangana sentiment in Andhra Pradesh.
He is saying if Jagan is voted to power, he will surrender Andhra Pradesh to KCR and become subservient to Telangana.
The TDP chief is also trying to propagate that the TRS government is harassing software companies in Hyderabad on the suspicion that they were helping the TDP.
Simultaneously, the social media volunteers of the TDP have launched a smear campaign against the TRS by tagging KTR and Telangana government, in connection with the IT Grids data theft scandal.
According to reports, the TDP’s IT Wing has allegedly issued an elaborate set of instructions as well as suggested tweets as part of its efforts to defame both KTR and the TRS government.
A long set of 25 possible tweets on an Excel datasheet, including many in Telugu, has been made available on Google Drive for TDP’s ‘online warriors’ to access suggested tweets with hashtags such as #KTRFakeTears and #TSGovtStealsData.
On Thursday, TRS Youth Wing lodged a complaint with the Cybercrime Police Station here in the city alleging that TDP’s IT wing was behind the smear campaign targeting TRS and KTR.
“They are paying huge amounts to certain agencies to trend certain hashtags on Twitter. This week, few trends to defame the Telangana government and TRS leadership were artificially created by paying money to certain agencies and individuals,” the TRS youth wing said in the complaint.
