Swaraj trolled over passport case
While right-wingers flayed the Minister of External Affairs, she was hailed by opposition parties
India’s Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj received so much flak on social media over the transfer of a passport officer, that politicians from across party lines tweeted their support of Swaraj, and commended her on the way she was handling Twitter trolls.
The passport officer involved, Vikas Mishra, had harassed inter-faith couple Tanvi Seth and Mohammad Anas Siddiqui, when they visited a Passport Seva office in Lucknow.
Seth tweeted about her experience, stating that Mishra had rejected the couple’s passport application, instead asking her husband to “convert to Hinduism” and take pheras (Hindu marriage ritual).
The couple’s ordeal came to an end when the official twitter account of Lucknow’s Passport Office @RPOLucknow, got involved, and the office helped grant the couple new passports the very next day.
Mishra was then transferred, but this news did not go down well with a lot of Hindu rightwing people. The hashtag #ISupportVikasMishra began to trend. As the hate poured in, Swaraj sarcastically tweeted that she was “honoured with some tweets”, and began ‘liking’ the worst of them.
Many of the tweets attacked the minister personally. Swaraj underwent a successful kidney transplant in 2016 after facing renal failure.
@dhillonsarbjit2 tweeted: “She is almost a dead woman as she runs on only one kidney (borrowed from someone else) and any time that can stop working.”
@BalaJna tweeted to Indian Prime Minister @narendramodi, and wrote: “If you believe that you became PM by Hindus votes, sack this publicity hungry #visamata [mother of visas] @SushmaSwaraj immediately. If you keep cheating Hindus, you will not be PM after 2019 May.”
However, the minister also received a lot of support from the opposition party, and Indians who demand a more secular India. The twitter account for India’s Congress party, @ INCIndia, tweeted to Swaraj: “No matter the situation or reason, nothing calls for threats of violence, disrespect and abuse. @SushmaSwaraj, we applaud your decision to call out the heinous trolls of your own party.”