Congress chief DK Shivakumar and Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao engaged in friendly banter on Twitter, debating which was the better IT city, after entrepreneur Ravish Naresh complained about Bengaluru’s poor infrastructure
File images of DK Shivakumar and Telangana’s KT Rama Rao. ANI and PTI
The Mumbai vs Delhi rivalry is known to all; people from both cities keep taking digs at each other from time to time.
However, there’s a new rivalry on the block and it started out all over a tweet.
Bengaluru’s DK Shivakumar and Hyderabad’s KT Rama Rao have been sparring on Twitter for the past few days over the best IT city status.
Surprisingly, the friendly joust between Telangana minister KT Rama Rao and Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar all began over a tweet by a businessman.
Here’s what we know of the verbal squabble.
Creating a tweet storm
A few days ago, Housing.com and Khatabook founder Ravish Naresh complained bitterly about the inadequate and poor infrastructure in Bengaluru.
He tweeted that startups in HSR/Koramangala are already generating billions of dollars of taxes but they have to contend with very bad roads, almost daily power cuts, poor quality water supply, unusable footpaths.
He went on to mock Bangalore for being famously referred to as India’s Silicon valley by saying many rural areas now have better basic infra than Silicon Valley (sic). In his tweets, he had tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the official BJP handle and MP Tejasvi Surya.
And then the Twitter war was born…
While Naresh didn’t receive a reply either from the prime minister or the BJP, Telangana’s IT Minister KT Rama Rao did react to his tweet, asking him to pack his bags and move to Hyderabad!
The minister’s response garnered a lot of buzz, with it receiving a lot of feedback and almost 6,000 likes.
Karnataka Congress leader D K Shivakumar stepped into the conversation days later, saying the Congress would restore the IT city’s glory once it comes to power.
Calling KT Rama Rao his “friend”, he said that he accepts his challenge and by the end of 2023, with Congress back in power in Karnataka, they would “restore the glory of Bengaluru as India’s best city”.
Replying to Shivakumar’s tweet, Rao said that let Hyderabad and Bengaluru compete healthily. “Dear @DKShivakumar Anna, I don’t know much about politics of Karnataka & who will win but challenge accepted Let Hyderabad & Bengaluru compete healthily on creating jobs for our youngsters & prosperity for our great nation. Let’s focus on infra, IT&BT, not on Halal & Hijab,” he tweeted.
Halal and hijab row in Karnataka
In the recent few months, Karnataka has been embroiled in controversies over the wearing of hijabs in schools and halal meat.
Early in the year, the IT hub was in the news when schools had banned students from wearing hijabs inside the classroom. It quickly snowballed into a huge controversy, which reached the Karnataka High Court. The court had then issued a judgment saying that hijabs were not an integral part to the practice of Islam.
In more recent days, there have been calls to ban Muslim traders from temple festivals and also calling for a ban on halal meat.
Also read: Explained: The growing call in Karnataka to boycott halal meat
Reacting to the news, former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said that it was a non-issue, and these were just attempts to disturb the peace in society.
The issue became even bigger when Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to “resolve the growing religious divide” in the state, warning that if the tech sector gets communal, India would lose its global leadership in this space.
With inputs from agencies
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