Mumbai : Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be losing his touch: At a function in New Delhi, where he paid tributes to socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan on his birth anniversary and other public personalities for fighting the Emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi regime, Modi tweeted, “Badal Sahab is sitting here…he is the Nelson Mandela of India. He has spent so many years in prison & that too for political reasons.”
Badal, even a political greenhorn knows, has had a chequered and controversial career: In 2003, Badal was booked along with his wife, son and seven others under the Provision of Corruption Act. He was acquitted last year due to lack of evidence in the case. In April 2015, a teenage girl died and her mother was seriously injured when they were molested and thrown from a running bus in Moga district of Punjab. The bus was operated by Orbit aviation, a company part owned by Badal. After a public outcry, Badal settled the case outside of court by paying Rs 30 lakhs to the girl’s father. His government, too, has had its share of scams and controversies and does not measure very high on the scale of honesty. Mandela, on the other hand, has a laudable track record against apartheid and had languished for years in prison due to his relentless fight.
Dripping with sarcasm, the denizens of Twitter had a field day. One of them pointed out tongue in cheek: ‘Narendra Modi calls Badal our Mandela. Did Mandela’s kids loot S Africa like Badal’s looted Punjab?’ Yet another nugget was: ‘If Prakash Singh Badal is Nelson Mandela then Mamta Banerjee is Mother Teresa.’ Sanjay Jha, spokesperson of the Congress, lost no time in tweeting: ‘Modi Ji just proved why he is our own Donald Trump.’ The incongruity of the comparison was lost on none with one person pointing out: ‘If Badal is Mandela then Somanath Bharati is Agent Vinod.’ The trolling prompted Congress leader Amarinder Singh to question the Prime Minister’s “sense of humour.”
“Either it is a tongue in cheek comment by the Prime Minister and he really did not mean what he said, or he actually does not know what he is saying,” Singh, who is also a key leader of the Congress in Punjab, said a written statement.
Input IBNLIVE.com
