A "kiss" shared by Vasundhara Raje and Kiran Shaw nine years ago continues to make headlines

A "kiss" shared by Vasundhara Raje and Kiran Shaw nine years ago continues to make headlines
A "kiss" shared by Vasundhara Raje and Kiran Shaw nine years ago continues to make headlines
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It started around two days ago with a Twitter user tagging ABP News and Biocon Chairman and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, but ended with Shaw and NDTV tweeting graciously about each other this morning. The flurry of tweets was about an alleged "kiss" that Shaw exchanged with Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje nine years ago.One June 27, a twitter user re-tweeted ABP News's tweet about a profile of Raje, calling her the “queen in LaMo controversy”. The user claimed that ABP News had used morphed photos of Raje and Shaw kissing. The link to the report in the tweet directed to a page which no longer exists.This was a reference to an image that was taken by PTI in 2006. The Economic Times had reported that a PTI photojournalist had taken the image when Raje and Shaw met at a World Economic Forum event in New Delhi. The image showed the apparently pair kissing on the mouth. However, it was apparently a case of bad camera angles, which inadvertently distorted their act of air-kissing.Even as it turned into a controversy that naturally involved the newest fad of abuse against the media  - the word “presstitute” – someone tweeted that NDTV too had used the image, prompting Shaw to tweet to that channel as well.Editorial Director of NDTV Sonia Singh replied to Shaw’s allegations and said that NDTV had not done so and would neither do it future. Shaw accepted the clarification and apologized.In response to other tweeple, she went further and suggested that tweeple should be made accountable.When the image of the "kiss" first cropped up in 2006, there was a huge controversy. The Opposition in Rajasthan had even demanded that Raje resign. A man named Sikandar Khan lodged a complaint in Jodhpur for obscenity.When asked to respond to the situation in an interview to CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar, Raje had said she was only being asked about that image because it involved two women. She said that had she been a male chief minister, she would not be asked about it.Raje also called Thapar “anti-feminist” for focusing on that, and not asking her about her performance. She rattled off figures of her achievements in bringing investment. Watch the video here: Editor's note: We tender an apology to Pratyush Thomas for using Ms. Kiran Shaw's picture taken by him without proper attribution. The attribution has been added and we truly regret the error. The picture was from Wikipedia under GFDL 1.2 license.

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