Sushma responds to trolls, puts out her own Twitter poll

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj conducted a Twitter poll on Sunday after she received a barrage of abuse on the social media website.

At the time of this report, she had already received 84,297 votes.

The poll came after Swaraj was trolled for days in connection with her helping an inter-faith couple to get their passports, who were allegedly harassed over religion by officials.

With about 10 hours left for the poll to end, she received support from 58 per cent of the total voters; the rest 42 per cent supported the trolls.

On Saturday, after liking few of the negative tweets that came her way over the interfaith couple’s passport issue, the external affairs minister put up a poll on Twitter asking if people approved of them.

“Friends: I have liked some tweets. This is happening for the last few days. Do you approve of such tweets? Please RT,” she tweeted.

Last week, Swaraj liked and retweeted several negative tweets, she received on social media over the inter-faith couple’s passport issue. Handling the trolls gracefully, she asked people on Twitter to go through the trolls she received while travelling abroad.

“I was out of India from 17th to 23rd June 2018. I do not know what happened in my absence. However, I am honoured with some tweets. I am sharing them with you. So I have liked them (sic),” she tweeted on June 24.

The EAM was on her week-long visit to four European nations when she received a series of tweets from the inter-faith couple, Tanvi Seth and her husband Mohammad Anas Siddiqui. They were harassed by an officer at a Lucknow passport office, as the Tanvi was married to a Muslim and did not change her name.

Following this, the regional passport office in Lucknow transferred the concerned officer and also issued passports to the couple.

However, some followers of Sushma Swaraj on Twitter were angered by her action, accusing her of indulging in minority appeasement.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Sushma Swaraj’s husband Swaraj Kaushal also received an abusive tweet that said, he should beat his wife and teach her not to do “Muslim appeasement”.