Dekh News

Digital India’s Tweet Army To Shoot Kashmiris Comes To Bite Back Ministry

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by

Kuldeep Mathur
in

On Friday, The Centre found itself in deep waters, after the Twitter page of Digital India praised a poem calling for the killing of Kashmiris by the Indian Army.

A Kashmiri protester throws a stone at Indian policemen during a protest in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday, July 18, 2016. A strict curfew was in effect in troubled areas for the ninth straight day Sunday, with hundreds of thousands of people trying to cope with shortages of food and other necessities. Tens of thousands of government troops patrolled mostly deserted streets in the region, where shops and businesses remained closed. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

The tweet read a poem urging high-handedness by the Army, with the caption ‘Heights of #Patriotism’. It was soon deleted, but managed to kick up a storm online.

One of the lines of the poem read as – Issued in public interest; all who love their lives; should quietly come to the city square; sing the national anthem; and not throw any tantrums here.

One of the lines read as – The bullets have just started, don’t say later you didn’t get a warning, you will have to say Vande Mantaram every morning. While another lines read as – Thrash them all you want, army; break their bones; If Mehbooba calls the police; Modi will handle it.

Authorities asserted that the tweet did not reflect the views of the central government and that the social media accounts of Digital India project is outsourced to a private firm, Veritone.

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, regretting the incident, told Indian Express that the contents of the tweet do not represent the views of the Digital India, Government of India or IT ministry. Prasad added that an immediate enquiry has been ordered into the incident and the concerned employee has been suspended.

CEO of National e-Governance – S Radha Chauhan said that the concerned employee had wanted to post the poem on his personal page, but by mistake he had posted the poem on the Digital India page.

The tweet came into light after AAP leader Ankit Lal pointed it out in Twitter.

Ankit Lal tweeted “Govt verified handle @_DigitalIndia finds poem calling fr mass murder of Kashmiris “Height of Patriotism”#Shame!”

In a similar incident in last week, All India Radio was caught in a raging row after one of its employees posted comments of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on its official Twitter page.

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