BENGALURU: Actor and social media cell head of the Indian National Congress Divya Spandana aka Ramya courted another controversy on Thursday when she shared a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, dressed in a white kurta, at the foot of the Sardar Patel ‘Statue of Unity’, with the caption, ‘Is that bird dropping’ on microblogging site Twitter.
The tweet, which was shared in the morning, created a huge surge of criticism and even abuse and most of it was targeted at the actor. However, she chose to defend her tweet and refused to take it down or apologise till Thursday evening.
While Ramya didn’t respond to any of the abuse directed against her, she did respond caustically to several senior journalists who pointed out that the tweet was in bad taste as it seemed like she had called the Prime Minister a ‘bird dropping’.
By evening, the Twitter feud had grown into a full-blown fight with the nature of Ramya’s comments getting more personal. While earlier she had refused to clarify if she was referring to the Prime Minister in her original tweet, in a response to a journalist’s criticism, she said that she did not have to apologise for a ‘sense of humour’.
The tweet was also criticised by the BJP through its Twitter handle @BJP4India. Replying to Ramya’s question about bird dropping, the BJP said that it was an example of the values of the Congress that were dropping.“Historical disdain for Sardar Patel + Pathological dislike for @narendramodi = Such language. Clearly, @RahulGandhi’s politics of ‘love’!,” the BJP said.
This is the second time that Ramya has courted controversy in the recent past. In September this year, she had put a picture of Narendra Modi, painting his wax statue with the word ‘Chor’ photoshopped on his forehead. She had also tweeted this picture with the hashtag ‘Chor PM Chup Hai’ leading to a case being filed against her under sedition laws.
In the past as well, the outspoken actor had been attacked for her views and had repeatedly refused to apologise or retract the same.