Moily's Rant? Disowned Tweet from Unverified Handle Hits Congress Where it Hurts

Bengaluru: Karnataka Congress MP and former Union Minister Veerappa Moily’s lone tweet about the way his party was choosing candidates for the Assembly election left Twitter aflutter on Friday, with the Congress facing embarrassment about an open allegation of an unholy nexus between road contractors and the government from one of their own senior-most leaders from Karnataka.

Moily’s tweet, “INC needs to solve money in politics. WE can’t afford to have road contractors and their nexus with the state PWD minister determine how candidates are selected for the upcoming assembly elections,” tags the INCIndia, INCKarnataka, OfficeOfRG twitter handles, besides the twitter handle of his son Harsha Moily.

Nearly 12 hours after the tweet was put up, Moily senior claimed he did not put out that tweet, that it was unauthorised, that he would never write such things about his party.

Interestingly, his son Harsha Moily is a ticket-aspirant for the Assembly elections from the Karkala Assembly segment in coastal Karnataka – Harsha’s twitter handle, until Thursday, seemed to be projecting him as a model of the party that “walks the talk”. He has earlier tried to contest from the party in the Lok Sabha elections to the Dakshina Kannada constituency – but failed to win the experimental ‘primary election’ held to seek popular opinion within the party on whether he would find the backing of party workers.

He has specifically tweeted about funds that have gone to this particular Assembly segment, crop loans waived in this region alone, how many farmers have benefited, etc. It has pictures of him sitting around with farmers, smiling with his father. There is even one where he refers to the State highways and district roads developed in Karkala – 133 kms in this area alone – leading to speculation on whether the contractors, who developed these very roads, pipped him to the post as far as tickets are concerned.

Both Moilys’ accounts are unverified. While Veerappa Moily has about 563 followers, Harsha’s has barely 52 followers. Both accounts reflected the same tweet for about 12 to 14 hours, before they were deleted.

“Neither me, nor my dad are in social media. It’s being handled by a third party. I believe our accounts were hacked or the message was sent without our approval,” was the defence from Harsha about the tweet.

The impact of this tweet – that seemed to hit at PWD Minister HC Mahadevappa, a man considered close to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah – had a ripple-effect. There has been much heart-burn on the ticket-front within the party – there are apparently nearly 1,500 aspirants for the Assembly tickets to the 224 seats. Mahadevappa’s son too is said to be an aspirant.

One of the top aspirants from Karkala, Uday Shetty, said he was far more qualified than Harsha for the ticket to contest from Karkala purely because he had worked far more on the ground for nearly 30 years for the party.

BJP State president BS Yeddyurappa quoted Moily senior’s tweet and said at last "someone’s conscience" prodded them to speak.

Union Minister DV Sadananda Gowda too tweeted: Where will you hide now Mr HC Mahadevappa, PWD minister of Karnataka, poster boy of 10PercentCM Siddaramaiah government. May he need to collect back money spent on CM and save for his existence in Karnataka for his retirement life post Karnataka election defeat.

BJP MP from Mysore – the district that is home to both Siddaramaiah and Mahadevappa -- Pratap Simha went so far as to suggest that the meeting of all MPs in Karnataka that was convened Friday evening to discuss the Cauvery verdict was postponed to avoid embarrassment.

Attempts by Congress leaders like Dinesh Gundu Rao and G Parameshwara to douse the flames did not succeed entirely. Rao’s reaction was again on social media: MoilyV has retracted his statement, but most unfortunate comments on PWD Minister Dr HC Mahadevappa as he has done excellent work in building road infrastructure in Karnataka. One of our best performing ministers.”

Parameshwara sought to reiterate that the senior Moily had distanced himself from the tweet and in any case, there is a specific long-drawn-out process of identifying candidates for the Assembly elections – one that involved going through many levels of screening through many committees. The process has just begun this week.

But already at the receiving end of the tag of “10PercentCM” from none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it remains to be seen how a red-faced Siddaramaiah government will recover from this hit from his own partymen.