Chennai: An avalanche of 'wow' tweets by the young audience at the Stella Maris College for Women after attending Rahul Gandhi's 'candid' interaction saw a sense of appreciation for the Congress President's willingness to address the youth.
“It's really hard to find a leader we can relate to as the youth, especially in a country like ours where the youth make up for a large part of the population but are usually ignored. It's interesting to know the leader as an individual and understand what they want to see with the country's future and the policies,” said Nora Alexi, Student body President, Stella Maris College.
“We don't understand the nitty gritties of politics, but he made us want to know our leaders. Taking note of 'first-time voters,' and especially women voters is a step in the right direction, said Diya Rani, another student. “It was completely unexpected. He very patiently answered and addressed every single student here. I feel like this he our leader of the future,” she added.
Twitterati outside of the student community too, admired Rahul Gandhi for his initiative to speak to the young ones of the country. One twitterati Aman Sharma wrote- “While interacting with students one leader mocks students with disability, other leader engages in free flowing discussion, offers insightful and nuanced arguments instead of rhetoric.”
One who goes by the twitter handle Man_In_Grey said “Funny how South India greeted Modi with #GoBackModi but Rahul with #VanakkamRahulGandhi. The range of the fake man's fakeness was recognised here,” he said.
Meanwhile, BJP supporters and Rahul’s critics who sought to avenge the ‘insult’ to Modi tweeted using #GoBackRahul, but also brought in a bit of variety by trending #GoBackPappu which became the third highest trending hashtag on Wednesday.
A similar hashtag war was launched when the Prime Minister visited Chennai last year to inaugurate the Defence expo and recently when he inaugurated a slew of government schemes. At that time #GoBackModi had trended on twitter but people soon noticed that many of the tweets were from Pakistan and nations like UAE, Saudi Arabia, it was said.
“#GoBackRahul-The Congress Party headed by the 'Family' is responsible for not only the Genocide of Tamils during 2009 in Sri Lanka but also of the massacre of Sikhs during 1984 in India, besides many Scams from the Jeep Scandal of Nehru's period to the Coalgate under Sonia's watch,” said Ambalavanan.b.@bavanan1951.
@SuryahSG tweeted “Haha! Look at the brutal silence of otherwise extremely active Tamil journos on #GoBackRahul twitter trend. If it’s against Modi they would be the first ones to instigate others to tweet, they themselves tweet to get it into trend charts & they themselves will report it as news!” He also claimed that #VanakkamRahulGandhi promoted by Congress vigorously as on 6.15 pm today worldwide was 98,200+ while India Tweets were 87,100+ Tamil Nadu Tweets were 19,300+ “So just 19,000 tweets were rolled out from Tamil Nadu on this trend!” he said.
However, Twitterati noticed the trend and also called attention to it.
One who goes by the twitter handle Man_In_Grey said “Funny how South India greeted Modi with #GoBackModi but Rahul with #VanakkamRahulGandhi. The range of the fake man's fakeness is recognised here,” he said. Another user, Thirunthaiyan Vrm said, “the Bhakts ploy of trending #GoBackPappu turned out to be a damp squib with many welcoming #VanakkamRahulGandhi.”
Dear BJP, one user wrote, “Rahul Gandhi has singlehandedly smashed your #GoBackRahul with his indepth knowledge, humility and love. Let your your leader Modi have one such interactio0n, It is an open challenge.”
