New Delhi: Just days ahead of the general election in India, social media giant Facebook Inc on Monday removed 687 pages and accounts linked to the opposition Congress party, citing “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

In an official statement, Facebook said it found that individuals used fake accounts and joined various groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement with the public.

“The accounts were part of a coordinated network and were removed not based on content or fake news but for inauthentic behaviour and for pushing spam. In total, there were 138 pages and 549 Facebook accounts involved in this particular takedown and around 206,000 accounts followed one or more of these pages,” head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook Nathaniel Gleicher said in the statement.

The removed pages and accounts asked voters to “choose wisely” and pick Congress in the April-May elections.

The multiple posts on the removed accounts included local news and criticism of political opponents such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“While the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that it was connected to individuals associated with the Information Technology (IT) Cell of Indian National Congress,” the statement read.

Gleicher said Facebook was constantly working to detect and stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour on its platform.

“We don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Gleicher stated.

Two of the samples shared by Facebook were of posts that flayed PM Modi’s initiatives and called for voters to support Congress president Rahul Gandhi in the upcoming general election.

Reacting to the development, Congress said it was studying the matter and would soon react “in an appropriate manner.”

“We need to verify the veracity first, whether any Facebook pages are linked to us. We shall react when we get to know the matter fully,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told Gulf News.

Later in the evening, Congress tweeted, “this is to clarify that no official pages run by Indian National Congress have been taken down by Facebook Inc. Also all pages run by our verified volunteers are also unaffected. In the meantime, we are awaiting a response from Facebook Inc to provide us with a list of all pages/accounts that they have taken down.”

Political analyst Vivek Saksena said the announcement made by Facebook to remove such pages and accounts marks a rare action from the social media giant.

“This indeed is a departure from the norm. The removal of accounts and pages by Facebook is an attack on the oldest and most prominent political party of India. It indeed is rare. Congress cannot afford to sit silent. The party must tell its voters what went wrong,” Saksena told Gulf News.

Facebook has apparently toughened up its rules governing political ads in not just India but many other countries in order to increase transparency.

“Facebook has faced increasing pressure from authorities around the world, including the Indian government, to ensure that its platform is not abused for political gains. Also the Facebook now understands that it cannot encourage in any way spread of misinformation, especially ahead of elections in a country,” political commentator Vijay Chaturvedi told Gulf News.

Additionally, Facebook has also removed 15 pages, groups and accounts for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” on Facebook and Instagram. These were linked to individuals associated with Indian IT firm — Silver Touch.

According to the website of Silver Touch, the agency is empanelled with the union government, various state governments and their supplementary programmes for delivering IT solutions.

It specifically mentions working for the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and the state government of Uttar Pradesh (UP).