Digs at Modi & dollops of controversy, Kerala Congress's X handle in focus amid Operation Sindoor

The Print

14-05-2025

On 11 May, the handle put out a post with a photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi sitting outside the enclosure of a big cat, with the comment: 'Beware the real tiger, not the paper one.'
In another post, the state Congress unit shared a clip from the 2013 Malayalam comedy Oru Indian Pranayakadha , in which actor Fahad Faasil, playing a young politician, flees a protest site to escape police lathicharge. Labelling the fleeing character as 'bhakts', the post said that the Sangh Parivar, 'which had earlier claimed that its elite strike force trained in Shakhas could be ready in three days since the Army 'takes too long', was completely silent during the actual conflict'.
Thiruvananthapuram: Shortly after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday announced a 10-day nationwide Tiranga Yatra to highlight the achievements of Operation Sindoor, the 'X' handle of the Kerala Congress posted: 'Tiranga will be in 144p, and Modi in 4K. Better call it Operation Rescue Papa Ji Yatra.'
Beware the real tiger, not the paper one pic.twitter.com/w8GzaSHvsR
— Congress Kerala (@INCKerala) May 11, 2025
Be it political discourse or India-Pakistan flare-ups, the Kerala Congress's 'X' handle, with over 1.42 lakh followers, has positioned itself as a prominent voice on social media, frequently sharing memes and videos targeting the ruling BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Managed by a team of seven Malayalees settled across the globe from different backgrounds including tech and journalism, the 'X' handle is part of the state Congress's digital media cell.
The day after Operation Sindoor, several discussions were taking place in WhatsApp groups about planning vacations abroad or moving to remote resorts out of fear of enemy strikes on our cities.
Make no mistake, all of them were Modi bhakts who wanted everyone else to go and… pic.twitter.com/Usmi1dyGaf
— Congress Kerala (@INCKerala) May 13, 2025
Former Thrithala MLA and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) vice-president V.T. Balram is chairman of the cell.
'We were able to witness the strong upper hand of the BJP across all platforms as well as at X. But they are using it to spread misleading information, a hate campaign, and baseless allegations against the former Congress government. So it was our natural responsibility to counter such a narrative,' Balram told ThePrint.
The 'X' handle has also faced criticism over several posts. Last week, during heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, the handle shared an image from the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war showing the Pakistani army's surrender in Dhaka.
Gentle reminder to Pakistan! pic.twitter.com/FWFAJaEIZb
— Congress Kerala (@INCKerala) May 8, 2025
In response, the BJP's Kerala unit posted an image of Rahul Gandhi protesting alleged corruption in the Rafale jet deal, with the caption: 'Gentle reminder to Congress: Rahul Gandhi didn't want India to have Rafael jets.'
The Congress responded saying, 'We aimed at Pakistan but looks like someone else got hit instead.'
'Even BJP's Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar, was not involved in the negotiations done by Modi and his partner Anil Ambani. Finally, Mr Parrikar resigned, unable to come to terms with the scale of the scandal. If it were the UPA government in power, we could have had 126 jets at a lesser cost, that too with technology transfer,' the post said, which drew widespread flak from BJP supporters for politicising the issue. It was deleted later.
Vijay Thottathil, an IT professional in Dubai, who is a member of the team, said, 'Why will the BJP Kerala intervene when we talk about Pakistan? So we defended our leader. There is nothing controversial about it.'
He added: 'The only controversy was that there was a war going on, and the tweet came then. People started complaining about it, and we got calls from different offices of Congress. We spoke to them, but some said that it was not the right time for such a post.'
Thottathil said that though the Congress deleted its post, the BJP had put up a post the same day, blaming the Manmohan Singh government for the 26/11 attacks.
Likewise, in February, the Kerala Congress 'X' handle drew criticism from actor Preity Zinta after it put up a post alleging that scandal-ridden New India Cooperative Bank has written off a Rs 18 crore loan taken by the actor after she handed over her social media accounts to the BJP.
To this, Zinta alleged the handle was spreading fake news and that she had repaid her loan a decade ago. After the controversy, the handle put up a post saying that they are glad to accept mistakes if they have committed any.
'Controversies do happen along with the attention we receive. But most of the time, it's about how much we said on the platform. Factual errors have happened only a few times with us,' Balram told ThePrint.
Balram said the Congress leadership or he intervenes when it comes to the content only during controversies, and the team has greater autonomy otherwise. The team took over the handle in March 2023 when it had only 50,000 followers. P Sarin, a former Congress functionary who joined the ruling Left Democratic Front ahead of the 2024 Palakkad bypoll, was its convenor then, but the team members said his absence hasn't created any impact in their work.
Balram said the team consciously takes up matters of national importance, as the platform mostly discusses those, while the state Congress's Instagram and Facebook pages mostly focus on Kerala politics.
'We have been able to do a lot of things, especially the larger-than-life character of Modi. Why we are confident is that there is also a lot of criticism against the handle, too. Whenever they get a chance or whenever there is a mistake, they will jump on our handle and call out. That is all because we have been damaging them very badly,' Vijay said.
Vijay also said that though the Kerala crowd is not very active on 'X', the team is hopeful of a change ahead of the assembly elections in 2026.
'There are going to be changes in Kerala's political landscape. We have to create narratives to oppose that. The Christian votes that are going away from Congress should come back. They are trying to keep the Christian community in Kerala close, and they attack churches in all other places. We are trying to expose that,' he said.
(Edited by Kartikay Chaturvedi, an intern who graduated from ThePrint School of Journalism)
Also Read: BJP sees 'sar tan se juda' imagery in Congress's 'gayab' dig at PM, calls it a signal to Pakistan