On Thursday, a court in Delhi ordered the Aam Aadmi Party to take down allegedly defamatory videos of BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj, as a result of her detention at a recent protest. The order by the court was issued following a complaint by Swaraj who was accusing the videos as being misleading, edited and aimed at tarnishing her image.
In response to the ruling, Swaraj was pleased with the court action and harshly condemned the AAP leader Saurabh Bhardwaj on spreading misinformation. She accused the party of revealing what she termed as the anti-woman face of the party, and said that the content was specifically designed to slander her and distort facts.
The scandal revolves around a video that was uploaded on April 19, during a BJP protest march. Swaraj added that the video misrepresented her behavior during her detention and implied that the event was a stunt. She also claimed that Union minister Raksha Khadse had been falsely identified in the video as a police officer as a part of the misleading report.
Swaraj claimed that the video has been selectively edited, captioned and commentated on to mock her. She also noted that the content was more widely spread when shared by party members again and discussed at a press conference.
After the release of the video, Swaraj had sent a legal notice to Bhardwaj. Nevertheless, she alleged that rather than withdrawing the content, he kept on propagating it in the society.
The case singles out the increasing popularity of social media in political conflicts and the problem of misinformation, reputation loss, and responsibility in online campaigning.