Chetan Bhagat at ISRO event World Space Week
Chetan Bhagat at the ISRO event World Space WeekTwitter

Noted Indian author and columnist Chetan Bhagat has given a befitting reply to justice Markandey Katju after the latter took a dig at him for becoming the chief guest at an ISRO event World Space Week.

The ISRO recently held a week-long celebration to commemorate two milestones in Space exploration; 4th October marking the launch of the first man-made satellite Sputnik-1 in 1957 and 10th October marking the day on which the UN declaration for peaceful uses of outer Space came into force in 1967. The space agency had invited Chetan Bhagat as the chief guest at this event.

Chetan Bhagat was thrilled at the ISRO's invitation. He tweeted some photos of the event on November 4 and wrote, "Really honoured to be the Chief Guest at ISRO for the recent celebrations of the World Space Week. I can't believe one of India's finest organisations chose me to address them. Truly a big moment of my life - my own moon landing! #isro #chetanbhagat #worldspaceweek  ."

Chetan Bhagat at the ISRO event World Space Week
Chetan Bhagat at the ISRO event World Space WeekTwitter

Many Twitteratis were not happy with ISRO's decision to invite Chetan Bhagat as the chief guest. A netizen mocked it, by replying to his post, "I didn't knew that ISRO was going through such a bad phase.  Sad really sad. ." Another replied to him, "@isro you dishonoured your stellar work."

Markandey Katju was one of those who took expressed their disappointment at the ISRO's invitation to Chetan Bhagat. The justice tweeted, "@IndianIdle @irfhabib: Making @chetan_bhagat, a fake 'intellectual', as a Chief Guest, only reflects on the low intellect of some people."

Markandey Katju
Markandey KatjuMarkandey Katju/facebook

Chetan Bhagat is apparently furious to see the response for his tweet on the ISRO's World Space Week. The author later tweeted, "How can some people be so negative? Wonder how sad and unhappy they are inside. How much pain must be inside them that leads them to express themselves so negatively."

Chetan Bhagat also retweeted Markandey Katju's post and responded to him, saying, "I am not an intellectual. abuse me, but don't call me that sir. btw, chief guests don't have to be all intellectuals. many organizations are open-minded and willing to learn from all sorts of people, and they don't behave like elitists. we had a wonderful, jam packed event. u tc."

Chetan Bhagat added, "Number of Chief Guest invites I get in a year: 1,000+ Manage to do less than 2% of them Some thinking it's something I aspire to or crave for, it's quite the other way around. God's been extremely kind to me. If you become more positive, maybe good things will happen to you too."