New Delhi, Aug 16 (IANS): In what appears to be a case of Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad calling former Congress President Rahul Gandhi a "loser", the war of words between the Congress and the BJP escalated on Sunday over an article alleging that social media giant Facebook favoured the BJP.

The Union minister and a senior face of the ruling BJP hit out at Rahul Gandhi as he tweeted, "Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP & RSS". He also dug up the controversial issue of Cambridge Analytica to make his point.

"You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?" asked the minister. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica was a data leak in early 2018 whereby millions of Facebook users' personal data was harvested without consent by the firm, primarily for political advertising.

Though the Congress had tried to distance itself, a Congress poster in then Cambridge Analytica CEO's London office came out in the public domain, leaving the opposition party baffled.

This attack came soon after Gandhi tweeted a news article that suggested Facebook officials in India were ignoring alleged hate speech by certain BJP leaders. Gandhi had said, "BJP & RSS control Facebook & Whatsapp in India. They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate."

Prasad did not stop at just seemingly calling the Congress leader a "loser" or raking up a past controversy that the Congress got entangled in. He further said, "The fact is that today access to information and freedom of expression has been democratised. It is no longer controlled by retainers of your family and that is why it hurts."

Upping the ante, Prasad sought a condemnation from Gandhi on the recent Bangalore riots, asking whether his courage to do the same has "disappeared".