Paltu Express - an obscure political slander page in Gujarati targetting Aam Aadmi Party - has spent over ₹58 lakh in just 30 days between September 8 and October 7. While the targets of the page - AAP and its supremo Arvind Kejriwal - are clear from the posts and ads its publishes, it does not clarify any affiliation to a political party.
BOOM looked at the top 15 spending pages on Facebook ads between September 8 and October 7, using Facebook's ad library report. We then looked closely at each of these pages to find a possible affiliation to an organisation or political party, and also categorise the ads according to its nature (political, inter-governmental, NGO etc). An analysis of these pages let to some interesting findings.
AAP Top Spender, BJP Nowhere In The List
Aam Aadmi Party, which shall soon face-off against the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Gujarat elections, turned out to the highest spender in the list, with a total of just over ₹1 crore across four pages. The highest spending page - AAP Gujarat - spent ₹46.8 lakh alone.
Surprisingly, the incumbent BJP was nowhere on the list, despite having a reputation of spending big on Facebook ads in the past (examples: here and here).
The second biggest spender, after AAP, was the United Nations which had spent ₹63 lakh during this period across two pages - the official Facebook pages of UN and UNICEF.
The Indian National Congress (INC) came third, with an expenditure nearly reaching ₹60 lakh across four different pages. The page that got the highest amount for ad expenditure was INC Gujarat's official Facebook page.
Following closely behind INC was the obscure slander page Paltu Express, with an expenditure of ₹58.6 lakh.
There were some other names in the list, with expenditures less than ₹20 lakh - Zee5 (₹16 lakh), Give India (₹15.8 lakh), Kutumb App (₹13.1 lakh) and Kuku FM (₹8.3 lakh).
Who Is Running Paltu Express?
While the list did not include any BJP-funded pages, we found striking similarities between other slander pages that were active ahead of past state election.
In the run up to the Bihar elections and Uttar Pradesh elections, pages running smear campaigns - similar to Paltu Express - were targetting the opponents of the BJP.
Ahead of the West Bengal elections we had observed three slander pages - two of them targetting the BJP, and one targetting the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Looking through the advertiser details for ads run on Paltu Express on Facebook's ad transparency page , we found that a phone number and address had been provided by the advertisers, to comply with Facebook's regulations around political ads.
The address was located in Ahmedabad - however, BOOM was unable to locate the exact place using Google Maps.
BOOM called up the phone number provided in the disclaimer two different times, which was received by a man on both the occasions. During the first conversation the call was disconnected right after we mentioned 'Paltu Express'.
During the second conversation the man confirmed that he represented Paltu Express. However, after we enquired as to who had employed his services to create the page on Facebook, the man said, "Sorry I am not able to hear you," following which the call disconnected yet again. We tried calling the number again, but this time the call did not connect.
While we could not directly link the page to the BJP, it bears striking resemblance to similar slander pages targetting BJP's opponents in other states.
Political Ads Dominate The List
Our analysis also revealed that politics remained the top area of expenditure for Facebook ads in India, accounting for 65.4 per cent of all the expenditure in the list of the top 15 pages we analysed.
Ads under the 'inter-governmental' category, run by the UN, came second with 18.8 per cent of the overall expenditure, while ads run by Zee5, under the 'media category', came third with 7.23 per cent of the overall expenditure.