Naidu paying cash to tweet against TS government: KT Rama Rao
HYDERABAD: TRS working president KT Rama Rao on Monday alleged that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the TDP were involved in “cash-for-tweet” scam. Providing screenshots of the tweets, Rama Rao alleged that Naidu’s TDP was paying money to people to tweet against TS government after the breach of data of AP people surfaced.
“Naidu and Lokesh used the information to influence the voters of AP. Once their data theft came to light after a whistleblower lodged a complaint against the firm concerned, Chandrababu and Lokesh in order to protect themselves started blaming the TS government,” Rama Rao alleged.
“In an attempt to shift the blame on to the Telangana government, the TDP tried to trend the hashtag #TSGovtStealsData. When it was examined, it’s learnt that the hashtag was being used by random people, who were not from AP, nor had any connection with the State,” Rama Rao said.
“A large number of the handles belonged to people from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and various other States. It is surprising to see non-Telugu people tweeting in the Telugu language on their handles,” Rama Rao remarked.
After reading a few more tweets with the same hashtag, it was understood that a private firm was hired to post it with the hashtag.
The firm used its multiple fake accounts to tweet using the hashtag. Handles in the name of Ria, a model from Mumbai, Santhosh Shukla an anchor and Bollywood chowk, a handle from Gurugram tweeted in support of Chandrababu Naidu. Surprisingly, all the twitter accounts had posted the same message in their tweets, Rama Rao alleged.
“These handles are owned by people who tweet for money. Chandrababu and Lokesh, in order to cover up their mistake, committed another mistake of paying money for tweets,” he said.