SOUTH
On Sunday, May 22, the BJP in Karnataka announced that it was naming Union Urban development Minister Venkaiah Naidu as a candidate for the BJP-alloted vacant Rajya Sabha seat from Karnataka.
However, a large battle over this nomination had already been kicked off on Twitter days before.
The '#VenkayyaSakayya' (That's enough, Venkayya!) campaign began on May 18 on the microblogging site Twitter. As the hashtag campaign started to trend, a group of Venkaiah supporters began a counter-campaign under the hashtag '#VenkayyaBekayya' (We want Venkayya!).
With his name confirmed for a new term from Karnataka itself, the blame game as only intensified. The major contention of the opposers focused on Venkaiah's birth. Venkaiah Naidu was born in Andhra Pradesh in 1949 and has never truly represented Karnataka. This is technically correct.
Venkaiah Naidu was elected as an MLA to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly twice from Udayagiri constituency in Nellore district in 1978 and 1983. Later, he served in various posts of BJP at the national level. In 1998, he was elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka. The BJP has elected him from the same Karnataka seat in 2004 and 2010.
Despite his years in Karnataka, the opposers alleged that Venkaiah could neither speak Kannada nor did he speak up about the problems of Kannadigas.
One tweet even so far as to recommend AB De Villiers for the Rajya Sabha seat from Karnataka, arguing that De Villers at least plays for the Bengaluru IPL team - the Royal Challengers - and has even sung a Kannada song of Dr Rajkumar.
As a counter, his supporters shared statistics on the grants he had helped Karnataka attain from the Centre. Perhaps feeling those numbers were lacking, they also tried to argue that the welfare of the nation was in any case above well-being of any one state.
Others who opposed Venkaiah’s selection tweeted:
Those in support of Venkaiah said:
Reacting on Venkaiah adopting a village from Andhra Pradesh, one person wrote: