The barrage of hate directed at External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj following her intervention in the Lucknow passport row involving an interfaith couple doesn’t seem to be subsiding.
Sushma Swaraj with her husband Swaraj Kaushal outside the Parliament. (Photo: Twitter/@SushmaSwaraj)
The barrage of hate directed at External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj following her intervention in the Lucknow passport row involving an interfaith couple doesn’t seem to be subsiding.
Days after Swaraj was forced to turn off the review section of her official Facebook page and expose the haters by ‘liking’ their tweets, the EAM continues to face verbal criticism bordering on the most abhorrent kind on social media.
Such has been the vitriolic hatred of the trolls that even Swaraj’s husband, Swaraj Kaushal, finds himself in the middle of the nastiness.
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Earlier on Saturday, the former Governor of Mizoram posted a tweet containing the screenshot of a now-deleted tweet from a user who wanted him to “beat Sushma Swaraj and teach her not to do Muslim appeasement”.
— Governor Swaraj (@governorswaraj) June 30, 2018
But even after Kaushal, a senior criminal lawyer, called him out, the user didn’t stop posting objectionable tweets. “Somebody needs to set the EAM right” read a tweet posted in response to Swaraj Kaushal’s.
Some body needs to set Sushma right
pull her out from her trance
of believing that Muslims will vote for BJPGovernor only U can do it, go ahead & do it
fix her, millions of Indians, will bless U— Mukesh Gupta (@MG_IITDelhi) June 30, 2018
who else can teach @SushmaSwaraj a lesson or two
— Mukesh Gupta (@MG_IITDelhi) June 30, 2018
Addressing Kaushal, the user also wrote that Twitter allows him to say “what I want to say to you”.
Thank god for Twitter
I can say to U
what I want to say to U— Mukesh Gupta (@MG_IITDelhi) June 30, 2018
On 25 June, Sushma had given back in kind to the trolls who took to social media to call her names. The EAM, who was not present in India at the time when the incident made headlines, was bombarded with a barrage of insensitive remarks by a section which was offended with the transfer of the passport officer at the centre of the row.
The incident dates back to 20 June. A couple, Mohammad Anas Siddiqui and Tanvi Seth, had alleged that a passport officer posted in the Regional Passport Office in Lucknow had asked Anas to convert to Hinduism and pulled up the wife for not changing her name after marriage.
The passport officer, Vikas Mishra, was transferred to Gorakhpur and the couple were issued the passports on Thursday, 21 June.
Mishra later denied the allegations saying he didn’t ask Anas to convert. He said he only followed the procedure and that Tanvi had a different name in her ‘nikahnama’ (wedding certificate), compared to that in her other documents, which was why he had asked for more proof.
Swaraj, who returned from her four-nation tour of Europe on 24 June, posted a message from her official Twitter handle in which she smartly called out those who trolled her.
“I was out of India from 17th to 23rd June 2018. I do not know what happened in my absence. However, I am honoured with some tweets. I am sharing them with you. So I have liked them,” wrote Swaraj.
Read More: Sushma Swaraj’s response to trolls is so epic that even Congress is applauding it
Within days after the 21 June incident, right-wing trolls flooded her Facebook page with 1-star reviews for the decision taken in the case of the interfaith couple. A deluge of 1-star ratings, numbering in thousands, brought the total rating of Swaraj’s page down to 3.8 stars from 4.3 stars out of a maximum 5.
Read More: How trolls forced Sushma Swaraj to turn off ‘review’ option on official Facebook page
The review section, which is now up, currently shows a total rating of 3.6 stars with 26K five stars and 13K one stars.
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