Abhishek Mishra, who claims to be a member of Vishva Hindu Parishad, an organisation in India whose objective is to protect Hindu religion, on April 20th tweeted he had cancelled a cab booking "because the driver was Muslim."
Mishra tweeted, "Cancelled @Olacabs Booking because Driver was Muslim. I don't want to give my money to Jihadi People."
The tweet, which has been retweeted over 900 times and liked by more than 1600 people has kicked off a debate across the country.
The ride-sharing service Ola, which was tagged in Mr Mishra's tweet, responded by urging him to "treat each other with respect."
"Ola, like our country, is a secular platform, and we don't discriminate our driver partners or customers basis their caste, religion, gender or creed. We urge all our customers and driver partners to treat each other with respect at all times," Ola said in a tweet.
Mishra has been criticised by many on Twitter.
Bhanu Agrawal said, "At Twitter Community, we really do not expect such comments against a religion. We request you to keep such tweets out of the community's reach."
Another twitter user Gurcharan Singh Said, "What about boycotting Islamic Petrol and diesel, you shameless."
Journalist Tarun Shukla said, "What a sad thing to say, a lot of them make great kites and manjha so that you won’t fly them? Others are great singers so that you won’t listen to them?"
However, Mishra received some support too. Harish Iyengar praised him saying, "Well done." Another user Raghav said, "Most of us do this."
Abhishek Mishra has a verified twitter account with over 15k followers.
He has some prominent Twitter accounts among his followers.
His Facebook cover page is a picture of him with Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India.
We have reached out to Abhishek Mishra for a comment and are awaiting his response.
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