New Delhi: As the Karnataka elections draw nearer, both Congress and BJP took their social media campaigns against each other to the next level on Saturday with the two parties digging out old tweets to establish links of its opponent with fugitive businessmen Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi.
While BJP’s Amit Malviya tweeted several screenshots of Congress spokesperson Divya Spandana’s tweets on Vijay Mallya and her association with Kingfisher, the Congress too fished out some tweets of Malviya rooting for former IPL chairman Lalit Modi.
The concerned tweets of Divya aka Ramya are from the days when she was still a Kannada actress and brand ambassador of Mallya’s IPL team, Royal Challengers Bangalore, in the years 2010 to 2012. She joined Congress in 2013 and now handles its social media.
Liquor baron Vijay Mallya has been declared a wilful defaulter whose extradition case is still ongoing in an UK court. The 62-year-old businessman is facing charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to around Rs 9,000 crores.
In April 2010, the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) suspended IPL czar Lalit Modi on 22 charges, including bid rigging, money laundering, betting and receiving kickbacks on broadcast deals. The Manmohan Singh government had initiated an investigation against Modi under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). He was accused of accepting Rs. 200 million from UK-based Emerging Media, paying Rs 2.43 billion to Cricket South Africa in contravention of FEMA, telling selective bidders how much to bid during the first IPL team auction in 2008, using illegal money to buy corporate jet through a Cayman Islands company and other violations under FEMA.