Two former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah, traded barbs on Twitter on Thursday -- wherein a few suggestions to improve memory and avoid stomach burn were also exchanged.
It began with a tweet from the People's Democratic Party (PDP) leader, Mehbooba Mufti, on Wednesday slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) decision to name Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur as its Lok Sabha poll candidate from Bhopal.
Mehbooba, while commenting on a journalist's tweet, posted: "Imagine the anger if I’d field a terror accused. Channels would’ve gone berserk by now trending a mehboobaterrorist hashtag! According to these guys, terror has no religion when it comes to saffron fanatics but otherwise, all Muslims are terrorists. Guilty until proven innocent."
To this, National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah reacted on Thursday: "'These guys' were your allies until they unceremoniously unseated you. 'These guys' have been this way before they came to power in 2014 but you only noticed their sins after June 2018. The desire to remain in power blinded you to their crimes until 'these guys' forced you to see!"
Mehbooba then advised the NC leader to improve his memory as his party had also allied with the NDA in the past.
"Someone’s had a belated reaction to my tweet ! As their first ally from J&K you’d know their true colours since you served as an MoE under NDA. Oddly enough Ram Vilas Paswan resigned post-Gujarat carnage on moral grounds but you chose not to. Consume almonds, Omar. Improves memory."
It didn't stop here.
Omar challenged the PDP leader to have a debate. He wrote in his tweet: "When you are done tweeting for your mother you can tell her I’m more than happy to debate my 3 years with Vajpayee Sahib v/s her 4 years with Modi ji but I’d rather do that directly with her & not with her understudy."
Within a few minutes, Mehbooba tweeted, "That’s no answer to my questions! Did I hit a raw nerve? Deflecting it with juvenile comebacks won't help Omar. If I were you Id pop an antacid for the stomach burn."
For the unversed, the National Conference and the People's Democratic Party are among the 22 parties that form a united opposition against the NDA government.