"Go Back Shah": This message literally reached right in front of Amit Shah. What happened?

Union home minister Amit Shah visited Chennai on 21st November 2020. He was greeted with a big welcome. There was a crowd right from the airport to the Leela Palace Hotel (his destination).

He was travelling by car. On the way, he got out and walked on G.S.T road. While he was walking, someone threw a placard saying "Go Back Shah!" The placard landed just a few feet away from him.

Amit Shah walked on apparently unmoved by the incident. BJP cadres did start arguing with the placard-thrower, but the police intervened and took him away for 'investigation.' The placard-thrower was identified as Durairaj, aged 67. He said that he had thrown the placard because he was angry that he had not received ₹15 lakhs in his bank account. In its 2014 manifesto, BJP had promised that amount of money to everybody's bank account! It had not fulfilled its promise.

The police did not file a case against Durairaj. What's more, even BJP did not file any case. Nor did they make any public statement condemning the incident. It did not appear much in the press.

Apparently, Durairaj was mentally unstable. However, that normally doesn’t stop people from filing cases. Generally, cases are still filed against people who do such things, and being mentally unstable only changes the verdict.

Why did BJP ignore such an insult?

In Tamil Nadu, the general public are very aware of what they deserve from the government. If a political party does not deliver what is due, people protest and vote strongly against it. Therefore, if BJP was to publicise the placard-throwing incident, even the reason why the placard was thrown would have been widely publicised. The public would have been reminded that BJP had promised ₹15 lakh in everyone's back account. In spite of winning absolute majority and Narendra Modi having such a strong personality, the BJP government had not fulfilled its promise to put ₹15 lakh in everyone's bank account. There would have been a strong sentiment against BJP if the placard throwing incident had been publicised.

Twitter trend:

The day Amit Shah visitted Chennai, hashtags #GoBackAmitShah and #TNWelcomesAmitShah were trending on Twitter.

Many such hashtags on social media are spread by political parties. However, that only starts them trending. Beyond a point Twitter trends depend more and more on the public sentiment as political parties can’t sustain the hashtags trending for too long. #GoBackAmitShah was trending so much in Tamil Nadu, that a lot of the tweets are likely to have been due to public sentiment.

On the other hand, #TNWelcomesAmitShah was not trending in Tamil Nadu! It was trending only in other states which made it show up among the national trends. Who would want to welcome someone into Tamil Nadu if they themselves are outside it? It is likely that most of the #TNWelcomesAmitShah tweets were spread by BJP. The party doesn't have so much presence in Tamil Nadu, so it would have found it easier to get the hashtag to trend in other states instead. In spite of #TNWelcomesAmitShah being a national trend, most people in Tamil Nadu did not use that hashtag.

So if the news spread about the placard throwing incident, it is likely to have raised the spirits of the public against Amit Shah as well as reminding the public about BJP’s promise of putting ₹15 in everyone’s bank account.

Read also: BJP's Rath Yatra was held in late 80s and early 90s. The Babri masjid was demolished in 1992. What happened in Tamil Nadu 28 years later?