CHENNAI: The DMK’s information and IT wing will be expanded to all the States in the country with a view to taking the achievements of the DMK government to the entire nation, the wing’s secretary T R B Raja, announced through the party organ Murasoli.

The need had arisen to propagate the principles of the Dravidian movement on social justice and communal harmony all over the country, Raja said in the announcement calling for party units to suggest names for appointment as coordinators and deputy coordinators of the IT wing in the various States.

Those with an inclination to the party’s ideology and a flair in social media management would be soon appointed as functionaries of the IT wing in all the State, starting with Puducherry where the team had already been chosen, the announcement said.

The move to strengthen the IT wing was being made following a popular perception that the IT wings of the rivals, particularly of the AIADMK and BJP, were highly active in trolling the DMK government, particularly Chief Minister M K Stalin.

Large scale nitpicking by the rival IT wings had led to the government being put on the defensive on a regular basis, particularly by those who, as the Chief Minister himself lamented, ‘cut and paste’ just one or two sentences of long speeches and present them in an out of context fashion to deride the DMK.

Going by the memes and trolls flooding the social media, the DMK was finding it difficult to handle them effectively even if most of them were based on fake news and wrong assumptions. Besides, for each and every thing that happened in the State, the blame is being placed at the doorsteps of the Chief Minister.

The AIADMK that has an well-oiled IT wing and the BJP, having expertise on social media propaganda at the national level, are said to have joined hands in attacking the DMK, making it difficult for the State’s ruling party to counter the propaganda unleashed against it.

As some DMK functionaries say, the party’s IT wing was doing well earlier and was coming out with proper counters before the 2021 elections but was now found to be faltering in that with the rivals having an upper hand.

The trend led to Stalin openly restraining his party leaders from shooting from the hips and even saying that he was having sleepless nights as the troll army twisted their speeches and changed their meaning.

Even Stalin’s statement was mercilessly trolled on social media. When pictures of the interiors of an unfinished office building, inaugurated by the Chief Minister, was made to go viral with the suggestion that the structure was designed with no application of mind recently, the government was forced to even publicise the building’s blueprint and clarify that work had not been completed.