Representational
A man claiming to be a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Sunday courted controversy with his tweet saying that he cancelled Ola cab ride because the driver was a Muslim.
“Cancelled @Olacabs Booking because Driver was Muslim. I don’t want to give my money to Jihadi People,” he tweeted.
The issue soon took the social media by storm and snowballed into a controversy as the person came under attack from twitteratis and politicians.
Many took to the microblogging site urging cab aggregator Ola to blacklist Abhishek Mishra, man who had sent out the tweet.
To this, Ola had the perfect response ever. It hit back saying that its platform is "secular."
“Ola, like our country, is a secular platform, and we don’t discriminate our driver partners or customers basis their caste, religion, gender or creed. We urge all our customers and driver partners to treat each other with respect at all times,” the cab aggregator's statement read.
Mishra's tweet was condemned by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, Delhi Congress leader Sharmistha Mukherjee.
Taking a dig at the BJP, Tharoor said such people should be ostracised rather than admired and “followed”.
“I remember an India where people who thought this way would have been ostracized rather than admired &”followed”. We need to #BringIndiannessBack,” his tweet read.
