Real encounters,virtual war: Now,defamatory videos on YouTube,FB

A fake Facebook profile was next. Created on Wednesday in the name of Jassi Khangura,it told his fans that the MLA’s Facebook page with nearly 24,000 likes has been hacked and they should now sign up for the new one. Following a complaint to the social networking site,the fake profile has also been taken off. “The video uploaded on YouTube was vilicious. Women not working for us were picked up and paid to speak against the company,” says Khangura. Another defamatory Facebook page is against former MLA Kushaldeep Dhillon,who in November had defected to the Congress from the People’s Party of Punjab by the name,‘Traitor Kiki Dhillon’.

Punjab’s leaders are also using social networking sites for airing their views and grievances. While Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh is a regular on Twitter,People’s Party of Punjab president Manpreet Badal uses his Facebook profile to do so. On Friday,Manpreet went ballistic on Facebook against a live programme of a leading English channel wherein all three leaders,Amarinder,Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal and he came face to face on Thursday.

Manpreet wrote: “It is very sad to see that even the media in India can be bought out. During today’s debate on NDTV — that was conducted by Pranoy Roy — I was deliberately not given enough time to air my views properly and my connection was repeatedly cut so as to prevent me from embarrassing my opponents by speaking the truth. No difficult questions were asked,there was no clash created and the whole interview was oriented to avoid the real issues. I was the only person out of the three — Captain Amarinder Singh,Sukhbir Badal and myself — who was cut off due to ‘time constraints’. In reality,they were stopping me from bringing both leaders to task. It was a complete sham. Shame on those journalists who lack the sense of responsibility that they constantly accuse political leaders of not having. They give the whole Indian media a bad name. Journalism must be neutral and thought provoking and give people an unbiased image.”

When contacted,Manpreet said the channel gave him few seconds to speak after asking him to leave a rally of 20,000 people and pursuing him for two weeks. “It is a shame. I wanted to question Sukhbir’s figures on state of Punjab’s finances. But I was given no time,” he said. His fans have also aired their on the “one-sided” show. “It was disgraceful — 30 minutes for Sukhbir and 4 minutes for Manpreet,” says one of the posts on Manpreet’s Facebook profile.

The Congress too is not happy about the “slant” of the show. “Captain Amarinder is too polite to have intervened on national television to lambast Sukhbir’s claims,” poll mangers of the party said. The party is upbeat about winning the online war with Sukhbir. Amarinder’s official Facebbok page has 44,000 likes against Sukhbir’s 37,000. The Jeeta and Jaggi cartoon characters are also now Facebook celebrities with fan following of 54,000.