The Uttar Pradesh unit of Aam Aadmi Party today posted a misogynistic tweet attacking the Union Minister Smriti Irani.
Through its official Twitter account, the Uttar Pradesh Aam Aadmi Party insinuated that Smriti Irani has an illicit relationship with PM Modi, innuendos which her detractors have often used while making sexist attacks against her. In the tweet in Hindi, the UP AAP referred to PM Modi as Smriti Irani’s hero, referring to a popular song from Varun Dhawan, Ileana D’Cruz and Nargis Fakhri starrer Hindi movie Main Tera Hero.
The distasteful tweet by the Aam Aadmi Party was in response to a tweet uploaded by the BJP leader. In her tweet, Smriti Irani had shared a report published on Jagran to assert that the states were cautioned by the Centre about the subsequent waves of the coronavirus outbreak in the month of January itself.
“The states were being cautioned by the Central Government since January to keep the pace of the ongoing war against Corona fast and in view of the increasing number of cases in the country. Along with the advice of expanding the testing, the Central Government had continuously alerted the states about the threat posed by the virus from time to time,” she tweeted.
कोरोना के खिलाफ चल रही लड़ाई की गति को तीव्र बनाए रखने एवं देश में बढ़ते मामलों को देखते हुए केंद्र सरकार द्वारा राज्यों को जनवरी से ही सावधान किया जा रहा था।
— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) May 15, 2021
टेस्टिंग को बढ़ाने की सलाह के साथ-साथ केंद्र सरकार ने समय रहते राज्यों को लगातार सतर्क किया था।https://t.co/MdmLwUkGLL
However, her tweet highlighting the abject failure of the state governments to take the alarm raised by the Centre seriously did not sit well with the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Aam Aadmi Party, which resorted to making a disparaging remark against her.
Past instances of misogynistic attacks against Smriti Irani
BJP leader Smriti Irani has often been attacked by her critics with such disgraceful innuendos. In 2015, a former Assam Congress Minister’s allegedly derogatory remarks against Ms Irani, who was then the Union HRD Minister, had kicked up a massive political storm. Nilamoni Sen Deka, the former state Agriculture minister, reportedly said at a public meeting in Nalbari that many people refer to Smriti Irani as the second wife of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Congress supporter Tehseen Poonawalla, who is the brother-in-law of Robert Vadra, who in turn is the brother-in-law of former Congress President Rahul Gandhi, had posted a barrage of offensive and vulgar tweets attacking the BJP leader. The tweets targeting Smriti Irani stirred a furore after they were broadcasted on English news channel CNN-News18. Finding himself caught in an awkward situation, Tehseen quietly deleted those tweets.
Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government in Delhi bungled up the response to the second wave of the COVID-19 outbreak
The tweet by the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Aam Aadmi Party comes in the wake of the resurgent coronavirus outbreak that has swept the country, especially the national capital, which is ruled by its party chief Arvind Kejriwal. Delhi has been amongst the worst hit by the renewed bout of the coronavirus outbreak as the city faced shortages of medicinal oxygen, key antiviral drugs, hospital beds amidst the rising number of COVID-19 caseloads. The Arvind Kejriwal led AAP government in Delhi has been accused of massively bungling up the response to the second wave of the coronavirus flare-up.
Even the hospitals in Delhi had accused the Aam Aadmi Party government of mismanaging the coronavirus outbreak and not providing a steady supply of oxygen to them, which resulted in deaths of patients who could have otherwise be saved if the Delhi government had competently handled the crisis.
