One may have thought Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi’s complicated relationship with maths may have been just an albatross, but no, she appears to be genuinely not on good terms with common sense. The former Congress leader today took to Twitter to what appears like her attempt to take a dig on the Eknath Shinde govt in Maharashtra. She shared a screenshot of a Twitter handle ‘Official PKMKB’ which had praised the new Shinde government in Maharashtra.
Shinde formed government in Maharashtra after the Shiv Sena faction led by him revolted and brought down the NCP-Shiv Sena-Congress government in the state. Chaturvedi perhaps thought the ‘Official PKMKB’ hailing Shinde government is a great point to attack the current dispensation.
Except, the thing is, it is a parody account. The location of PKMKB Academy is ‘Karachi, India’, instead of ‘Karachi, Pakistan’. Karachi is a part of Pakistan and not India, yet. But more importantly, PKMKB is actually an acronym for an Internet slang used to mock Pakistanis by Indians. The term gained prominence after Indian Armed Forces carried out surgical strikes in February 2019 to destroy the terror camps across the border after the February 14 terror attack that took lives of 40 CRPF personnel in Pulwama. Since then, Indian Twitter users have often used ‘PKMKB‘ acronym as a triumphant cry whenever Pakistan loses, whether it is a cricket match or general mess the not-so-friendly neighbourhood country is in.
To think Chaturvedi fell for a parody account and thought PKMKB Academy is an actual academy of some importance and significance across the border just shows how clueless the politicians really are. One glance at their profile and one could easily figure out it is a troll account. But then, that would mean putting pressure on the mind.
Priyanka Chaturvedi and her complicated relationship with maths
Priyanka Chaturvedi has quite often displayed her poor understanding of Mathematics. During the migrant crisis following the Coronavirus lockdown, she falsely claimed that the Modi government amassed huge profits by running special trains for migrant workers.
The Sena leader failed to comprehend the difference between the ‘revenue earned’ and ‘profit’. Contrary to the claims of Priyanka Chaturvedi that the Indian Railways earned huge profits, the Railways has spent Rs 2,142 crore on running Shramik Special trains but earned a ‘revenue’ of just Rs 429 crore and did not incur any ‘profit’. In fact, the Modi government had incurred a loss of nearly Rs 1,700 crores after it ran Shramik trains to ferry back the stranded migrant labours from various parts of the country.
As early as 2014, she was seen misreading numbers and portraying growth as an impediment of Modi government’s Achhe Din.
She had said how Index of Industrial Production for consumer goods had gone from -23.4 in June 2014 to -20.9 in July 2014 – which is actually an increase in the index, and tried to take a jibe at Modi govt. She has since deleted the tweet.
After that, she had also got the data for dyslexia wrong. She had falsely claimed that 15% of all students are somehow dyslexic and that their total count stood at 228 million. Which cannot be true as a report from 2014 suggested that total number of students in India are 315 million. This includes school and college going students. Of these, not everyone is going to school, so number of schoolgoing children is even less. Of that, students with diagnosed or undiagnosed dyslexia would be even less.
Chaturvedi has also been previously snubbed by Poland’s Ambassador to India for propagating false information amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
