A one line tweet by the Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, on Tuesday caused ripples not just in Indian politics, but in newsrooms across the world.
Kejriwal had tweeted, “CBI raids my office.”
One of his follow-up tweets called India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, ‘psychopath’ and ‘coward.’ The use of such harsh words is pretty common in Indian politics during the election season, when name calling becomes the order of the day.
But a sitting chief minister, holder of a constitutional post, calling an elected prime minister coward and psychopath is rare. Perhaps this was the reason why even the foreign media detected a huge editorial value and chose to splash the headlines on their outlets.
From Britain’s The Guardian to Saudia Arabia’s Arab News, the story found prominence across the globe.
The coverage of Modi allegedly abusing CBI, India’s federal investigating agency’ to settle political scores may not augur well for a prime minister, who’s known to be a globe-trotter.
Not too long ago, a question on India’s domestic politics (Gujarat massacre of 2002) had caused considerable embarrassment to Modi during his UK visit.
Modi and his party, the BJP, will hope that Tuesday’s development, which is fast turning out to be a spectacular own goal by the central government, doesn’t come to haunt the prime minister during his next foreign visit.
