DH 2017: A year of innumerable gaffes

Where would we be without political gaffes? From some light-hearted fun to major allegations, 2017 had them all. Here are some of the noteworthy ones.

Rahul Gandhi

While addressing the students at the University of California in the US, Rahul Gandhi claimed that Lok Sabha has 546 seats instead of 545. Being a member of the Lok Sabha and the Vice-president of the grand old party of India, and their probable PM candidate, he was not spared.

While inaugurating Indira Canteen, the flagship programme of the Siddaramaiah government, Rahul mistook the program named after his grandmother and called them Amma canteen, being run by the Tamil Nadu government. He also claimed that “every single city in Bengaluru” is going to get these Canteens, when he meant to say that the programme would be expanded pan Karnataka.

Pakistan at the UNGA

Pakistan’s United Nations envoy Maleeha Lodhi while replying to External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj in the UN General Assembly, tried to pass off a photograph of a girl wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza as alleged atrocities by the Indian Army in Kashmir. An unverified Twitter handle, @PakistanUN_NY, which describes as “Official Twitter Page Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the United Nations” still carries the tweet with the picture.

Times Now

English news channel, Times Now, continued to court controversy by calling Kerala “Thundery Pakistan” on June 2nd during BJP President Amit Shah’s visit to the state after the controversial cattle-slaughter ban. A corrigendum released by the channel later read, they regret an “inadvertent error” that had appeared on their channel. Twitterati had already started to trend #ApologiseTimesCow by then.
 

Shashi Tharoor

When Manushi Chhillar was crowned Miss World, Shashi Tharoor found a chance to take a dig at the one-year-old demonetisation move of Modi government. Her surname sounds similar to a colloquialism, that stands for loose change in many Indian languages. He wrote:

Others

Megyn Kelly on Narendra Modi

It was certainly an embarrassing moment for PM Modi, the second most followed person on Twitter when American journalist Megyn Kelly asked him “Are you on Twitter?”

In April, when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed visited India, herself and Modi shared a lighter moment when the anchor requested the prime ministers to 'step down' from the podium.

US President Donald Trump appeared to push aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro, to reach the front of the group during a tour of NATO's new headquarters on May 25, reports Associated Press.

A photo op of PM Modi with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and his wife also turned into a gaffe.

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