The Congress on Monday said it will have to “verify the veracity” of Facebook’s move to take down 687 pages and accounts linked to individuals associated with the information technology cell of the party. The pages and accounts were deleted not because they peddled fake news, but for inauthentic behaviour and promoting spam, Facebook had said.

“We don’t react off the back, to use reports which may just be coming in,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said at a press conference according to ANI. “We would need to verify the veracity of this, whether there are any Facebook pages linked to us. We will have to check this and get back to you.” Tewari said it could be that the pages are not linked to the Congress, or that the news report is incorrect.

The Congress issued a clarification on Twitter, saying that no official pages run by the party have been taken down. “Additionally, all pages run by our verified volunteers are also unaffected,” the party added. “In the meantime, we are awaiting a response from Facebook to provide us a list of all pages/accounts that they have taken down.”

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party attacked the Congress. “Today a very historical development has taken place,” Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said according to ANI. “Owners of those accounts were not known. It was fake. It was used to spread falsehood against the Narendra Modi government.”

“When an inquiry was done, it was found that those individuals were linked to the Congress IT cell,” Prasad added. He claimed that the Opposition party was desperate ahead of the polls, and was hence resorting to dubious means to gain support.

The 2019 General Elections will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19, and the results declared on May 23.