Around February 15, 2022, a video showing T Raja Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Goshamahal Assembly of Hyderabad, Telangana, threatening Uttar Pradesh’s Hindu voters with dire consequences if the Adityanath-led BJP government is not re-elected, began circulating on social media.

He was heard and seen warning the voters that if they do not vote for a “Yogi-government” then their houses will be identified and destroyed with bulldozers and JCBs.

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This threat, ostensibly telling Hindu voters that they will be severely punished if they do not vote for BJP,  translates as, “To those who do not vote for Bharatiya Janata Party, I want to tell them that Yogi ji has ordered JCBs and bulldozers in thousands. These have already left for Uttar Pradesh. After the election, the areas of each person who did not support Yogi ji will be identified. And you know right what JCBs and bulldozers are used for? So, I want to say this to those traitors of Uttar Pradesh who do not want that Yogi ji becomes the Chief Minister again – beta (child) if you want to live in Uttar Pradesh then you have to say ‘Yogi-Yogi’ (support Yogi), otherwise you people will have to run out of Uttar Pradesh.”

Once this video went viral the Election Commission issued a notice to T Raja Singh, for his statement. Issued on Wednesday, the notice put on record that Raja was seen and heard in the video clip saying, “Those who do not vote for the BJP, I would like to tell them that Yogiji has arranged thousands of JCB bulldozers…” The ECI told Singh to give his explanation within 24 hours on why action should not be initiated against him for allegedly violating the model code of conduct, the Indian Penal Code, and the Representation of the People Act.

“Now, therefore, you are hereby called upon to show cause within 24 hours from the receipt of this notice as to why appropriate penal action under criminal law should not be initiated against you and also as to why appropriate action for violation of the model code of conduct should not be taken against you,” stated the show-cause notice which was quoted in media reports. However, soon the ECI gave the BJP MLA additional time to respond to its notice that had said Singh was “prima facie” in violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) as well as provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Representation of the People Act.

T Raja Singh has following his tried and tested way of going viral on social media via video clips of hate speeches. In 2020, Raja Singh was among the central figures named in an August Wall Street Journal report that claimed Facebook ignored hate speech by BJP leaders to protect its business interests in India. By March of this year, they concluded Singh not only had violated the company’s hate-speech rules but qualified as dangerous, a designation that takes into account a person’s off-platform activities. By March 2021, when Facebook finally concluded that Raja Singh had violated its own Community standards (Objectionable Content) and Violence and Criminal Behaviour rules, he was removed from FB. However, it now seems that while my own Facebook account was taken down that year, but now it seems to be back online as an unverified account, it has also had repeated instances of communal  posts. His hate words are also spread via so called “fan pages” named Tiger Raja Singh Fan Club and T Raja Singh Samarthak Jalgaon PRK Group which collectively have lakhs of followers.

CJP has continuously tracked hate offenders

Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) has continuously tracked, and complained about this hate offender for years. In February, 2019 CJP’s Hate Watch team had identified how one false rumour has proliferated, and prompted a hate-filled speech by Raja Singh that was broadcast via Facebook. The CJP had highlighted Singh’s influential position as a sitting member of the Telangana Legislative Assembly as well as a party whip in the state, noting that he had half a million followers on Facebook. This incident took place right after the BJP-PDP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir collapsed, and ahead of the Amarnath Yatra scheduled for July-August.

In 2018, Singh had posted on his Facebook account explicitly asking his followers not to buy anything from the “terrorist Kashmiris” for the annual Amarnath Yatra. By July 2019, the video had been viewed 3,00,000 times. Singh has also had FIRs registered against him for promoting enmity between groups but Facebook continued to entertain his account harbouring venomous content. CJP had also discovered in 2019 that his page which was supposedly taken down, was not the case and his official page was active. The CJP was invited to a Roundtable on Online Hate Speech: Facebook Community Standards, on February 5, 2019 where during the question answer session with Facebook’s Varun Reddy, CJP through its Secretary Teesta Setalvad and its sister publication- SabrangIndia writer Amir Rizvi showed examples of hate speech, like the page of Raja Singh, which was not taken down even after repeated reporting.

Why did Singh use the bulldozer threat?

T Raja Singh seems to have drawn inspiration from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath who too had recently said that “the BJP government believes in development but also has bulldozers for the mafia and that is why women in the state feel safe.” According to news reports the incumbent CM was addressing an election meeting in Shahjahanpur’s Kant, and targeted the opposition Samajwadi Party, saying it only built boundary walls for graveyards in the name of development but his BJP government keeps “development on one hand and a bulldozer on the other. This bulldozer is used to run over the mafia. For this reason, women in the state are safe, and the girls are going to schools.”

Recently his party colleague, Brij Bhushan Singh, a BJP MLA from Kaiserganj, had also said, “Uttar Pradesh has trigger happy/ shooter Baba and bulldozer baba’s government, your ‘Inshallah’ be damned,” in a communal hate campaign in Uttar Pradesh. These intimidating words –that clearly constitute hate speech–were spewed by Singh when he was addressing a public meeting in Basti, UP.

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