Modi vs Rahul: Hashtag battle on Twitter

As Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi started speaking to the women wing of Ficci a war broke out on the micro-blogging website Twitter between pro-Modi and anti-Modi netizens.
The most prominent hash tags used by these opposing groups was #Feku and #ModistormsFicci.
The hash tag #Feku (Feku means a person who makes tall claims), initially seemed to be critical about Mr Modi and started taking pot-shots at the BJP leader. However, soon pro-Modi twitters also joined in and started using #Feku to refer it to Congress’ vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
It is for the first time that Modi baiters have actively used Twitter to put out their point and take a dig at a leader from the Opposition party. Twitter has usually been considered as a bastion of pro-BJP and pro-Modi netizens.
It seemed what agitated the anti-Modi brigade was the way Mr Gandhi’s speech at the CII last week was criticised and made fun of by using the hash tag #PappuCII.
#Feku was the most-trending topic on Twitter on Monday, way ahead of #ModiStormsFICCI.
Commenting on the political war in the cyber space, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, tweeted, “Content of the speeches not withstanding I love the twitter battle of the hash tags. 2014 is going to be an interesting election.”
Some of the top tweets were, “Revealed. Smriti Irani got her dialogue writer from sas bahu serials to write #feku’s speech today,” said a tweet. Another tweet said, “#Feku considers women only as maa-behan; not as a person, as an individual in her own right!.” The supporters of Mr Modi tweeted, “#modistormsficci superb orator... has an example for each vision...deserves to be PM.”