#Top10Criminals: Why Modi's critics should have shown restraint

On June 3, Twitter was abuzz after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pictures appeared in a Google search for "Top 10 criminals" page. Some Congress leaders and Modi-baiters started tweeting screenshots of the page; as a result, #Top10criminals started trending on top, on the micro blogging site. Gloating over the faux pas, for which Google apologised on June 4, Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha asked on Twitter whether Modi’s name figures as one of the top 10 criminals because of 2002 Gujarat riots, fake encounters or the snooping controversy. He even took a dig at the Modi supporters: "Bhakt friends, don't be cynical, dismissive. We're genuinely perturbed to have Mr Modi in #Top10Criminals. After all, he got a "clean chit".

Why do you think Mr Modi features in #Top10Criminals? Gujarat riots? Fake encounters? Snooping? Google--why??? https://t.co/NAilSDU4fN

— Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) June 3, 2015

The question here is whether the Congress leaders were serious when they took potshots over Google’s faux pas. If they were just having fun at the cost of the prime minister’s image, then they were knowingly spoiling the country’s image for no reason. But if Jha and his ilk were serious, then they should have also sampled some of the results that Google threw with some other keywords and decided whether to take them seriously or not.

1. Google’s result for the "top 10 criminals" also includes images of Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani and Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh. The page also has a picture of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar with whom the Congress is negotiating for a tie-up before the Bihar Assembly elections later this year. Will the Congress workers agree that Digvijaya, Kejriwal or Jethmalani are criminals?

2. If you key in just "most corrupt", Google will automatically suggest a complete sentence – "most corrupt political party in the world". The search engine’s result would not be acceptable to the Congress supporters. It is "Indian National Congress".

3. Similarly, just as the BJP supporters have rejected Google’s search for "top 10 criminals", the Congress leaders will not accept that their vice president Rahul Gandhi’s image appears in the results for the query for "most corrupt politicians in India". Former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s image is just beside that of Kejriwal's. The page also includes the images of senior Congress leaders Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, P Chidambaram, Kamal Nath, Veerappa Moily, Naveen Jindal and Suresh Kalmadi. Only the last in this list had gone to jail in the 2010 Commonwealth Games scam.

Will the Congress have the courage to own it up if they think that Modi’s picture was rightly placed in the "top 10 criminals" list?

Narendra Modi’s image also appears on Google images' results for the "world’s most powerful man" along with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the text accompanying the result, dated November 5, 2014, says, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday made his debut among the world's most powerful people, ranked 15th on the Forbes list topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin who pipped his US counterpart Barack Obama for a second year in a row."