Bengaluru deluge peels off mask on BJP hypocrisy

Hyderabad: Heavy rains in Bengaluru appear to have peeled off the masks of hypocrisy and double standards worn by the troll armies of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These same armies, which go hammer and tongs against the Telangana government whenever rains triggered inundation in Hyderabad, have become conspicuously silent when similar and even worse photographs […]

Hyderabad: Heavy rains in Bengaluru appear to have peeled off the masks of hypocrisy and double standards worn by the troll armies of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

These same armies, which go hammer and tongs against the Telangana government whenever rains triggered inundation in Hyderabad, have become conspicuously silent when similar and even worse photographs and videos began circulating of Bengaluru, where the BJP was in power since 2015 and with the BJP-led State government there yet to hold elections after the city council’s term ended in 2020.

Shocking videos of waterlogged roads and inundated residential areas, including some of the most posh localities of Bengaluru have been making the rounds after heavy rains measuring 131.6 mm lashed the city in 24 hours. Compare this to the 324 mm rainfall that hit Hyderabad on October 13, 2020, leading to widespread damage and inundation of several localities, and IT Minister KT Rama Rao certainly made a point when he tweeted that no Indian city, including Hyderabad, today was immune to the disastrous consequences of climate change.

The minister’s statesmanship puts in sharp contrast what happened in October 2020, when BJP leaders here and their IT cell soldiers went on a rampage, questioning what the TRS government was doing here. The same leaders and soldiers were ironically silent on Monday even after being taunted by many on social media with the Bengaluru situation.

Hyderabad’s October 2020 horror was, in fact, after an all-time record rainfall, according to the Telangana State Development Planning Society, which said the previous time Hyderabad received such heavy rainfall was 20 years ago, in August 2000, and even that was much lesser than the 2020 rains, pegged at 240 mm in 24 hours.

What the BJP’s troll armies do while repeatedly tried to poke fun at the situation here, including sharing of fake videos or videos from other countries terming them as from Hyderabad, stands exposed further when it is recalled that none of their leaders could convince the union government to ensure the much required flood relief for Hyderabad even two years after that disastrous October.

Interestingly, while the Bengaluru videos were all original ones from that city itself, several videos that were circulated by the BJP’s trollers in Hyderabad were fake, right from pictures of a badly potholed road, which was actually from Mumbai, and WhatsApp videos of a family swimming inside their home filled with rain water and of a crocodile wading through the bylanes of a residential locality, both of which were confirmed by fact checking agencies to be from other States.

But on Monday, when reality hit, it hit so hard that BJP’s entire troll army did not have anything to tweet about, with some even going to the extent of trying to twist Minister KT Rama Rao’s tweets though a majority on social media appreciated his statesmanship and also pointed out that it was not Indian cities that faced the challenge of urban flooding, but even cities from so-called developed countries, including New York where the iconic subway was flooded after an onslaught of rain, were victims of such climatic aberrations.