The Congress Party on Wednesday out rightly refuted claims about the party having links with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is a London-based data mining firm which was recently accused of harvesting confidential personal data of millions of Facebook users.

While addressing a news press conference, media in-charge of Congress Party said, “This is a new lie from BJP’s factory of lies. Law Minister Ravishankar Prasad has dished out a new lie by using fake news as diversion tactics. Congress never engaged or hired services of Cambridge Analytica”.

Earlier to that, Prasad cited the media reports to allege that Congress Party had links with the data firm Cambridge Analytica. Responding to the allegation in the press conference, Surjewala said, “Desperate times call for desperate press conferences. BJP’s factory of fake news has produced another fake news today. Such baseless allegations shows character of the party”.

Instead, Surjewala accused the BJP Party and its close ally the Janta Dal (United) of utilizing the services of the data firm during the elections.

 “Fake Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is presenting fake agenda. The truth is contrary to this. The BJP and JDU used Cambridge Analytica. The BJP hired the Indian business partner of Cambridge Analytica — OBI during Delhi Assembly election and used its services. Apart from this, the firm also involved in the party’s Mission 272+ (BJP’s slogan for 2014 general election) as an additional support in Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Delhi”, Surjewala further added.

“We checked the profile of Himanshu Sharma, vice president of OBI on LinkedIn. He mentioned there that the company handled four election campaigns of ruling BJP.” Surjewala alleged in his following statement.

According to Surjwala, it was Home Minister Rajnath Singh who inaugurated the OBI office in the year 2009. “It shows the connection between BJP and the company. BJP has a lot to answer now”, he added.

When Himanshu Sharma was asked about the allegations, he rejected Surjwala’s claims and said that he managed call centers run by BJP during 2014 elections. Himanshu Sharma is the vice president of OBI and earlier he was a director of a firm called B2B alliance and he recently joined OBI.

Speaking during an interview, OBI managing director Amrish Tyagi — son of senior JD(U) leader KC Tyagi — said he was “invited by Cambridge Analytica to work with them as a researcher during US presidential election.” He further added that after the controversy became public, Cambridge Analytica sent him an advisory asking him not to talk to the media for now.

Tyagi and Sharma, both denied that they had anything to do with data leak. And OBI did not sign any document pertaining to the partnership with Cambridge Analytica, but there was an understanding between us that it would help the firm establish its footprint in India.

Cambridge Analytica became the centre of discussion after reports surfaced about the firm accessing millions of Facebook users’ personal and confidential data. The data was used to identify the personalities of American Voters and as a result influence their behavior to be able to help President Donald Trump to get through the election for a win.