BJP leader Subramanian Swamy steps up attack on party's IT cell chief Amit Malviya

Subramanian Swamy | BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has written a second letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a joint probe in the actor’s death by the CBI, NIA and Enforcement Directorate.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on September 9 ratcheted up his demand to sack the ruling party’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya, accusing him of running  a campaign against him using fake Twitter handles.

“By tomorrow If Malaviya is not removed from BJP IT cell (which is my five villages compromise proposal to Nadda) it means the party brass does not want to defend me. Since there is no forum in the party where I can ask for cadre opinion, hence I will have to defend myself,”(SIC) Swamy, the BJP’s Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP), wrote on Twitter on September 9 hinting that BJP didn’t want to defend him

Swamy had started targeting the BJP IT cell,  that manages the social media presence of the party, two days ago.

“The BJP IT cell has gone rogue. Some of its members are putting out fake ID tweets to make personal attacks on me,” he wrote on September 7. He, however, did not specify what the campaign against him was about.

“If my angered followers make counter personal attacks I cannot be held responsible just as BJP cannot be held responsible for the rogue IT cell of the party,” he wrote.

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Swamy, an economist, was a member of the Janata Party serving as its president until 2013 when he joined the BJP.  He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha on April 26, 2016. Known as an activist politician, Swamy filed a case in 2012 in the Supreme Court to prosecute A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam. He also accused the then Union Minister P Chidambaram and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, in the scam. He had also filed a case against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi accusing the mother-son duo of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds during the management of the National Herald newspaper.

Malviya, who introduces himself as “in-charge of BJP’s national Information & Technology and ex banker” in his Twitter bio is a prominent BJP face in TV debates.  He leads BJP’s social media campaign against Opposition defencing the party’s position on critical issues.

The BJP leader responded to people who urged him to ignore the attacks.

“I am ignoring but BJP must sack them. One Malaviya character is running riot with filth. We are a party of maryada purushottam not of Ravan or Dushasan,” (SIC) the MP known for his maverick ways tweeted. Swamy also retweeted twitter posts mocking the IT cell chief and urging BJP president JP Nadda to resolve the issue.

“Vilification happens when somebody becomes insecure of his or her position. It happened with Indira Gandhi after I returned from abroad and entered Parliament during the Emergency and after20 seconds Point of Order escaped again abroad. Patel, Mukherjee and Upadhyaya were victims,” he wrote in one of the tweets.

Swamy has been expressing disagreement with his party over a host of issues, the recent being the issue of JEE-NEET exams with students, parents and many political leaders demanding that the exams be postponed. . However, the Joint Entrance Examination Main,( JEE MAIN 2020) was conducted from September 1-6. The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Undergraduate,( NEET 2020) will be held on September 13 for over 15 lakh students. The Supreme Court is on September 9 considering a fresh plea of the 11 petitioners regarding NEET postponement.

Swamy was the only BJP leader who had supported students and demanded that the exams be deferred Swamy has been critical of the Centre on Goods and Services Tax (GST) too. In February, he had called GST a “biggest madness of the 21st century”.

“Now that it has been decided that colleges and institutes will re-open only in January 2021, there is no reason not to delay the NEET exams to after Deepavali when the weather will be better and Coronavirus threat lower,” Swami said on September 8.

“JEE/ NEET exams in the middle of a galloping COVID-19 infections, paralysing lockdown effects, a collapsing economy, a monsoon in bloom, Chinese Dragon gobbling our territory, & chors and murderers in Bollywood, is like Jallianwala Bagh where innocent were gunned down,” (SIC) he had tweeted on September 4.

Sources said that the BJP IT Cell had faced wrath of top leadership over the “dislike” campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his virtual events. Party leaders including Malviya, however, blamed Congress for engineering ‘dislikes’ asserting that only a fraction of the dislikes was generated from India. Malviya couldn’t be contacted for a comment.