File photo of Minister for External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj. (Getty Images)

News18.com

Updated on: June 25, 2018, 5:55 PM IST

June 25, 2018, 5:55 PM IST FOLLOW US ON: Facebook Twitter Instagram

New Delhi: As the BJP and its leaders maintained their silence, it is the Congress party that has come out in support of Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj after she received a barrage of abuse for transferring an Islamophobic passport officer.

"No matter the situation or reason, nothing calls for threats of violence, disrespect & abuse. Sushma Swaraj ji, we applaud your decision to call out the heinous trolls of your own party," posted the Congress’s official Twitter account.



The BJP and all its leaders, meanwhile, decided to stay quiet about the incident.

Swaraj on Sunday used Twitter to highlight the abuse she has been facing for the ministry's action against passport officer Vikas Mishra, who had allegedly humiliated an interfaith couple in Lucknow.


The passport officer was transferred after the couple tagged Swaraj with their complaint. In their tweets, Mohammad Anas Siddiqui and Tanvi Seth had alleged that Mishra had asked the husband to convert to Hinduism and pulled up the wife for marrying a Muslim in front of several others.

The couple's passports were issued a day after they complained to Swaraj on Twitter. The Regional Passport Office in Lucknow shunted Mishra to Gorakhpur the same day.

The union minister on Sunday shared a sample of the tweets she has been receiving since she ordered the transfer of the officer, who had claimed that he was just doing his duty. “I was out of India from 17th to 23rd June 2018. I do not know what happened in my absence. However, I am honoured with some tweets. I am sharing them with you. So I have liked them (sic),” she wrote.

The two tweets that Sushma Swaraj “liked” and retweeted are abusive and communal in nature.

Swaraj also faced nasty backlash on her Facebook page from her own BJP supporters, some of whom even demanded her removal from the union cabinet for being “too secular”.

Such was the campaign that Swaraj had to turn off the review option on her Facebook page. Her page’s rating had gone down from 4.3 star to 1.4 star in just a few hours. According to an estimate, more than 30,000 reviews were posted in a span of just a few hours.