CPI (M) Mohammad Salim said @quizderek should rename his handle as @morphderek.
TMC were left red-faced on Saturday after Derek O’Brien called a press conference in which the Rajya Sabha MP showed a bunch of pictures and videos to the press to attack the Left, Congress and BJP. Among them was a picture of Rajnath Singh offering a laddu to CPI (M) leader Prakash Karat.
He had said at a press conference: “I would not like to comment much on this, but would want everyone to see these pictures and the alliance between CPM, BJP and the Congress, which has been hidden from the people. Andar dosti, bahar kushti.”
However, the picture was photoshopped, which led TMC to release a statement which said: “Two videos & 6 pics were shown at our press conference. We removed one pic immediately when our research team learnt it was photoshopped.”
Derek O'Brien at the press conference and the photoshopped picture
This led CPI (M) MP Mohammed Salim to threaten legal action. He wrote on Twitter: “Seems TMC can do no right. Even quizmaster(@quizderek) asking fraudulent questions. People will give befitting answer. #MorphDerek. Will surely take legal action. @quizderek should rename his handle as @morphderek. He is following lying & deceitful nature of his leader.”
Read: Derek O'Brien caught red-faced after sharing fake pic to show BJP-Left bonhomie
‘We put up six pictures on the website and two important videos. Now out of those six pictures, one as it turned out to be had been morphed by someone else. As soon as they research team got to know about his, we took it off the website immediately. The matter ends there and I thought we did the most dignified thing by taking it off,’ Derek O’Brien told ANI. Asserting that there were political parties in existence who have made a hobby out of photoshopping pictures, he added that the TMC did not morph the picture and had taken it straight from the internet.
‘We have taken the picture off, it is done and doing anything further will be making a mountain out of a molehill,’ he added. Talking about the threat of legal action from the BJP, O’ Brien said that, ‘Yes, anyone can take a legal way in the matter. But this is nothing to get so uptight about.’
In a humble note, he further added that the research team could have been more careful in their research and being a ‘quiz master’, he was feeling a little angry with himself.
However, this did not seem to pacify the BJP, who have threatened to proceed with legal action over the blunder. ‘Mamata and the TMC have realised that the ground has slipped from beneath their feet in west Bengal and are resorting to untoward methods. And that is why they showed this morphed picture showing Rajnath feeding a sweet to Karat ji and that too at a BJP office,’ BJP leader Sidharth Nath Singh told ANI.
Showing the morphed and the original picture on his cellphone, he said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the TMC, who had called the ‘Narmada’ tapes as doctored were now resorting to morphed photographs as they wanted to ensure that they get the votes in any possible manner. ‘We are working on a legal recourse which will be sorted out tonight and we will take legal action tomorrow. Be it cyber crime or filing an FIR, we will take action on TMC and Derek o Brien. We will even have him arrested if we have to,’ Singh said.
With inputs from agencies
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 "Mohammad Salim and Derek O'Brien")
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