Gujarat Elections 2017: BJP ‘Blocking’ Hardik Patel’s Campaign, Alleges His Social Media Incharge

A massive social media campaign against the BJP by Hardik Patel led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) has caused the Gujarat BJP to go into full panic mode. They are reportedly using all their influence with the central govt. to block popular social media posts posted by a 700-strong team of young PAAS supporters.

“The BJP Yuva Morcha (youth front) and the BJP IT cells are putting pressure on the convener of our social media team not to post against (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi. They got our pages and the accounts of our team members blocked to prevent us from informing the people how the BJP has only used us as a vote bank over the decades,” Het Patel, in-charge of Hardik’s social media team, told NewsClick.

The famous catch phrase ‘Vikas Pagal Ho Gaya’ (Development Has Gone Mad), which has gone viral on social media, was also coined by a young 11th class boy from the IT team of Geetaben Kiranbhai Patel – the PAAS leader who is credited with mobilising women for the Patidar reservation agitation.

The boy, who requested anonymity, told NewsClick that he saw a truck dashing over a divider in his area and suddenly this tagline came to his mind which he posted on Facebook. It went viral in few hours. The hashtag is still doing the rounds on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

The influential Patidar community in Gujarat that have traditionally supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is up in arms against the saffron party for failing to pay heed to their demands for reservation in government jobs and education, and launching a massive police crackdown on PAAS that resulted in the killing of 10 youth of the community in 2015.

Perhaps realising that Hardik is apparently getting success in converting the anger of the community – which accounts for 12% of the state’s 60 million population – into a vote against the BJP and possibly in favour of Congress, the BJP is allegedly making all efforts to stop him.

It is not very difficult to get Facebook pages blocked. For those with a few thousand followers, just 20 people are needed to report to Facebook against a post. This will result in Facebook blocking the account that has been used for the particular post.

Het alleged that their accounts are “frequently being hacked” as well. Hardik’s social media team of 700 young men operates eight broadcast groups on WhatsApp each having 256 recipients apart from 20,000 Facebook pages, excluding individual accounts.

Het alone is the administrator of 14 Facebook pages, all of which have thousands of subscribers. His popular page titled ‘Het Patidar Befam’ has more than 7,000 likes. Facebook page of Dr Nachiket Patel, another influential member of the PAAS, has 1.48 lakh likes. Hardik’s page has so far been liked by over 7.43 lakh people. These are in addition to the Facebook pages run by their social media team.

Het also alleged that Internet speed is deliberately being slowed down at the venues of Hardik’s public addresses. “We do Facebook Live of all the public meetings of our leader. Of late, we have realised that the Internet speed is very slow to prevent us from spreading his messages to people at large,” he added.

The Patidar community has strong presence in at least 60 constituencies in Saurashtra region. Who will win the bitter fight between Hardik Patel and BJP will be decided when these areas go to polls in the first phase of elections on December 4.