Lavanya Ballal Jain, Congress spokesperson, subjected to online sexual harassment; incident motivated by BJP spokesperson

Shehzad Poonawala used a sexual innuendo against Lavanya on social media, posted a video, and encouraged his followers to share the same with a contentious hashtag
Image: Instagram/LavanyaBallalJain

The past few weeks have served as a reminder that even women in a position of power in India are not safe from facing harassment and sexual violence, and justice is as far a reality for them as it is for a common woman, complicated by further marginalization of caste, creed and religion. Towards the end of 2023, we saw Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik being forced to retire from wrestling in protest of a close aid of her sexual abuser becoming the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). Notably, the said sexual abuser is still a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While India was yet to overcome the pictures of Sakshi Malik crying at a press conference and leaving her wrestling shoes on the table as she announced her retirement, the news of three men, two of which were associated with the ruling party, getting arrested for gang raping a 20 year old student in the campus of IIT- BHU surfaced. The association of the accused with the BJP party, along with their photos with the top-most leaders, caused an uproar on social media. High on the heels of this news, during the first week of 2024, we now witness a female Congress spokesperson being subjected to cyber harassment by leaders of the BJP party and its affiliated persons.

Since January 2, Lavanya Ballal Jain, a spokesperson for the Congress party, has become the target of online trolling after a heated TV debate with BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla. The incident occurred during a live interview where Poonawalla made comments on Jain’s name and mockingly referred to her as “Lavanya BJ”, which lead to a sharp exchange between the two. In the interview itself, Lavanya pointedly asked Poonawalla to not make sly comments against her name.

“Do not make vulgar inferences, I’m very aware of the social media team talking about my name,” Lavanya had said while asking the host of the TV interview to ‘control’ her guest during the debate.

In response to her remark, Poonawalla could be seen smiling shamelessly.

The controversy further escalated when Poonawalla posted a video clip of the TV interview on his social media account, questioning why Jain was triggered by his factual statements. The said video had been captioned by Poonawalla as “Don’t know why Lavanya BJ was so triggered when I quoted facts!!”

The said post can be viewed here:

As the said post started getting wind, Lavanya took to social media to express her dismay and accused Poonawalla of insulting her name and religion during the TV interview. She referred to the BJP spokesperson as a ‘cheapster’ and urged him to refrain from making vulgar comments during interviews. In a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), Lavanya also claimed that Poonawalla was on the payroll of one of the richest Jain individuals, indirectly alluding to Gautam Adani.

Abusing Jain’s while being on their payroll is a bj party habit. Your payroll comes from one of the richest (Jain) man on earth,” wrote Lavanya in her post.

The said post can be viewed here:

As was expected, the comments made by Poonawalla led to opening of a flood gate of misogynistic and derogatory remarks against Lavanya. Following the TV debate, Lavanya was severely trolled online on social media platforms, particularly on X, where the hashtag #LavanyaBJ gained traction and was trending for hours on X. Since the hashtag contained a derogatory term, the online attacks against the Congress spokesperson were further intensified. It is essential to highlight here that Poonawalla did not only ask the misogynistic bullies to not harass Lavanya, but rather was gleeful about the said hashtag trending for hours on X. in his post, Poonawala wrote:

In another post later, he wrote “Now let’s move on from #LavanyaBJ – I know this isn’t in my or your control and its spontaneous outburst of people on SM towards the arrogance, ignorance of the congress spokesperson but let us now have the bigger heart & ignore her.”

The complete post can be accessed here:

Poonawala has also reposted posts from his profile on ‘X’ which contains the said derogatory hashtag and misogynistic remarks.

Some of the same are:

 

Some examples of the social media harassment that she was subjected to is as follows:

 

 

 

Lavanya responded to the said cyber harassment and attack strongly and did not let the remarks pass by. One of her post, responding to a troll, is as follows:

While many BJP supporters justified using the sexual innuendo against Lavanya by claiming that she herself refers to the BJP as the “BJ party”, she pointed that she had started using the word as a way to hit back at persistent trolling.

In view of the amount of harassment that Lavanya faced, many people, any some political leaders, stood in support of Lavanya. Supriya Shrinate, Chairperson Social Media & Digital Platforms and Member of the Congress Working Committee, took to ‘X’ to slam the bullies and express her anguish at the harassment that Lavanya was being subjected to. Calling the incident to be a “mob lynching of the worst kind, armed with sexual innuendo”, Shrinate wrote:

Mohan Kumaramangalam, Working President Tamilnadu Congress, also took to X to express his dismay and wrote:

Even today, more than two days after the incident, trolls were harassing her:

This whole incident serves as a reminder as to how BJP leaders misbehave, and encourages others to demean women, especially if the woman is from an opposition party.

 

Related:

Wrestler Sakshi Malik quits wrestling as close aid of sexual harassment accused Brij Bhushan gets elected as president

Delhi Police on Brij Bhushan sexual harassment case: “Liable to be prosecuted and punished for sexual harassment, molestation and stalking”

Trolling, harassment of Dalit writer and activist, Shalin Maria Lawrence condemned: NWMI

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