It is easy to get away with getting your names, spellings and facts wrong at some point, except if you happen to be a public figure, least of all in the field of politics.
Congress leader and Chief Minister of Karnataka has had to learn this the hard way. With trolling becoming an increasingly common activity on Twitter, Siddaramaiah landed up at the receiving end of Twitter backlash when he happened to confuse China’s Sichuan province with Siachen in a tweet put out on his handle soon after his meeting with Chinese delegation led by Lee Zong to discuss development in the region.
Siddaramaiah shared his picture with Lee and wrote:
“It was good to meet delegation led by Lee Zong C M, from Siachen province and discuss Bengaluru’s infrastructure development, other key areas.”
The CM’s blunder did not go down well with the Twitterati and if you are still wondering what the goof up was, here it is for better understanding.
Siachen is not a province in China, but a Himalayan glacier on the Indian side of the Line of Control between India and Pakistan. It is Sichuan which is a province in China.
Both India and Pakistan claim sovereignty over the entire Siachen region. In 1984, India launched Operation Meghdoot, a military operation that gave India control over all of the Siachen Glacier, including its tributaries. Both India and Pakistan continue to deploy thousands of troops in the vicinity of Siachen and attempts to demilitarise the region have been so far unsuccessful.
Given the sensitivity attached to the region, Siddaramaiah could well have done without this controversy. Understandably, the reactions have been less sparing.
Here are some of the reactions to the CM’s faux pas:
Soon after realising the blunder, the tweet was later taken down.
Earlier this month, US President-elect Donald Trump got trolled on Twitter for a typo in a tweet against China, where he misspelled ‘unprecedented’ as ‘unpresidented’.
