Hyderabad: A post by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator from Saroornagar, Akula Srivani, claiming that Apple’s voice assistant Siri responds to “Assalaamualaikum” but not to “Ram Ram”, “Radhe Radhe” or “Jai Sri Ram”, has drawn sharp criticism on X, with users mocking her and asking why she does not raise public issues.
In the post, the Saroornagar leader said all four phrases are greetings that deserve equal respect, and urged Apple to fix the gap in an upcoming update. She said she had tested Siri herself.
Many of the replies questioned her priorities. One user, JSRBRS, wrote: “People of Saroornagar, look who you elected as your corporator. A brainless public representative who never utters a word about development, education or progress.”
Another user, Coreena Suares, urged Saroornagar voters not to repeat what she called a mistake.
A user identified as daemons_dragon listed unemployment, poverty, inflation, women’s safety, child abuse, sexual harassment, corruption, pollution, rising crime and road safety, and asked whether Srivani had spoken up on even one of them.
Others aimed at the argument itself. Abhishek Baxi, who posts as baxiabhishek, wrote that millions also use phrases such as “bol kutte” or “what’s up, bitches” or “mela babu” as greetings, adding that chatbots cannot be tuned for every cultural artefact.
Many replies were sarcastic. One user, watARSHmelon, mockingly asked her to throw the phone into Saroornagar lake and live-stream it, and said her party should ban companies like Foxconn from the state and the country for making “anti-national phones”.
Another post tagged Apple and John Ternus and claimed that Apple CEO Tim Cook had “recruited Srivani Akka” and changed Siri to “Srivani”.
Srivani has been in the news before. In May, police registered a case against her at Saroornagar Police Station under Sections 299 and 353(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) over alleged remarks targeting the Muslim community. An earlier complaint was filed against her at Mirchowk Police Station in March.
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