Congress runs Twitter poll on Indians killed in Iraq; Sushma Swaraj retweets, wins by a massive margin

NEW DELHI: The Congress has been holding Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj responsible for the death of 39 Indians in Iraq by terrorist outfit Islamic State. The party even moved a privilege motion against the minister claiming that she "misled" Parliament over the issue.

Keeping up the attack, the Congress on March 25 ran a poll on Twitter asking whether Sushma Swaraj is responsible for the deaths. While Congress would have hoped the answers are against Swaraj, what it would not have expected was that she would retweet the question herself from her own handle.

The results of the poll turned out to be hugely in Swaraj's favour. Twenty four per cent people voted yes and held Swaraj responsible, a massive seventy-four per cent polled against the accusation. 

Several people, in turn, accused Congress of using the name of the dead people for politics. 

Using dead for votes___

— Navaneeth K (@navaneethkz) March 26, 2018

Congress to dead bodies bhi search na Karti. So stop playing cards on our dead bodies pls — Sameer Sidhu (@SidhuSidhu8) March 27, 2018

Guys just stop embarrassing yourselves @INCIndia
Every poll you conduct gives you the same result over and over again
That Congress suffers from a trust deficit and a leadership deficit and must leave behind Gandhis and Divide and Rule policy if you want to survive beyond 2020_ — Dr Sankalp (@DrSankalp2) March 26, 2018

As per the motion moved by the Congress, Swaraj, along with her colleague Minister of State for External Affairs General VK Singh (retd), "deliberately misled" the families of the 39 Indians killed in Mosul, on the floor of Parliament and outside. Between June 2014 and March 2018, the minister continued to state as a matter of fact that the individuals were not only alive but that the government was undertaking steps for their release, it read.

As many as 40 Indians were abducted by ISIS in June 2015 from Mosul in Iraq but one of them escaped by posing as a Muslim from Bangladesh, Swaraj had said in Rajya Sabha. The remaining 39 Indians were taken to Badoosh and killed.

She had also revealed that the government had over the course of the crisis received information from different heads of states on three separate occasions that said the 39 Indians had not been killed.

She added that search operations led to a mound in Badoosh where locals said some bodies were buried and deep penetration radars were used to establish that the mound was a mass grave. Indian authorities requested their Iraqi counterparts to exhume the bodies which will now be brought back to India.