Congress' social media head Divya Spandana on Thursday tweeted a controversial comment along with a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi standing next to Sardar Patel's 'Statue of Unity', evoking a sharp reaction from the BJP which slammed it as the "language of arrogance".
Spandana tweeted a picture of Modi standing next to Sardar Patel's 182-metre-tall statue in Gujarat, which was unveiled on Wednesday, with the comment: "Is that bird dropping?"
Asked about the tweet, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra hit out at the opposition party, alleging that "this is the real culture" of the Congress party. They miss no opportunity to abuse the Prime Minister of India, he said.
"It is the same party which called the Prime Minister 'neech'. Shashi Tharoor called him a scorpion and now Divya Spandana says that he is a bird's dropping," Patra said.
"This is nothing but language of arrogance from the Congress party for the normal Indian who with his sheer hardwork become the Prime Minister of the country," he said.
A normal Indian appears bird's dropping to them, while a dynast is power centre for them, Patra said.
"This is arrogance of dynasty which is abusing the democracy of India," he alleged.
The BJP's official Twitter handle also replied to Spandana's tweet, saying "it is the values of Congress that are dropping."
Despite criticism from the ruling party and Twitterati, Spandana remained defiant. "When you’re done huffing & puffing take a breath & hold a mirror to yourselves. My views are mine. I don’t give two hoots about yours. I'm not going to clarify what I meant and what I didn't cos you don't deserve one," she tweeted.
When journalists questioned her online about the meaning and propreity of her tweet on the Prime Minister, Spandana rebutted them with more tweets, remaining unapologetic altogether.
When Nidhi Razdan of NDTV pointed out to her that she "can’t afford to take that position (of ambiguity)" since she is a "public figure" and a representative of a political party, adding that people of India "deserve to know" what her tweet on the Prime Minister meant, Spandana responded by saying "Not my circus, not my monkeys"
In response to journalist Rohini Singh of The Wire, who called Spandana's tweet on Prime Minister "distateful", Spandana, first, simple wrote "What a dirty mind", later, after adding some more words, said "what a convoluted, manipulative, dirty mind," calling the description "apt."
(with inputs from PTI)
