NARENDRA MODI TWITTER PM Narendra Modi urges to keep Kumbh participation symbolic amid COVID crisis 'I prayed that two 'shahi snan' have taken place and Kumbh (participation) should now be kept symbolic. This will boost the fight against this crisis,' the prime minister tweeted in Hindi. A few months after the Twitter accounts of several high-profile individuals, like Barack Obama, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian and Bill Gates, were hacked in a major Bitcoin scam, the social media giant has confirmed that the official Twitter account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly taken over by hackers claiming to be part of the notorious ‘John Wick’ hacking cartel. New Delhi: Microblogging website Twitter on Thursday said it has fixed the account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website and the Narendra Modi Mobile App that was briefly hacked in the wee hours and tweets asking people to donate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were posted on it.
Narendra Modi is something of an outlier among world leaders on Twitter. He currently follows over 2,000 people on the micro-blogging platform, which is substantially higher than most other heads of government. For example, Turkey’s Recip Tayyip Erdogan follows four people, Russia’s Vladimir Putin 20, America’s Donald Trump follows 47, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau 960 (former US president Barack Obama follows over 6 lakh accounts, but he is an exception).
This is largely because Modi follows a substantial number of accounts that belong to laypersons, some of whom have been characterised as trolls and been accused of abuse and harassment online. This has led to much discussion about whether the Prime Minister should be following them at all. His critics contend that by following these individuals, the PM is tacitly endorsing their trolling, an argument that the BJP vociferously refutes. Either way, when Modi recently said that “everybody should train themselves to never spread dirt through the social media,” it would certainly apply to some of those he follows.
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But they are obviously not the only people he follows. Mumbai Mirror used Followwonk, an online tool for analysing Twitter followers, to examine Modi’s list. Our analysis is based on the 1943 accounts Modi was following until early August. On Raksha Bandhan, he followed another 55, most of them women, including a number of athletes who picked up medals at the Asian Games. The current figure is 2003.
Laypersons☺ 36.5%
According to the categories Mirror devised, these roughly 700 accounts make up, by far, the largest group that Modi follows (men make up about 80 per cent of this group). Some of them may be karyakartas or BJP party members, but have not identified themselves as such on Twitter; however, almost all of them are die-hard supporters of the Prime Minister and defend him furiously online while bashing the opposition, especially
Modi has said in the past that he checks Twitter every morning, so presumably he is aware of the accounts he follows.
In this category, the handle @ggiittiikkaa has the most followers with 190,892. She describes herself as “hyper hypernationalist, bharatiya janta, sanghi bhakt, hindutva brigade” and was listed in journalist Swati Chaturvedi’s book, I am a Troll, as a troll that Modi follows. On September 6, following the Supreme Court’s verdict on Section 377, she tweeted: “Thank you Supreme Court for your valuable time in giving judgments for the long pending #TripleTalaq and #Section377. Truly great for our minorities! Appreciate! When will the majority get to hear on: - Uniform Civil Code - Article 370 - Ram Mandir?”
One of the more troubling accounts belongs to Mahesh Vikram Hegde, the cofounder of right wing publication Postcard News. Hegde was arrested in Bangalore in July for allegedly spreading false information about a Jain monk being attacked by a Muslim youth when the monk had been injured in an accident. Facebook subsequently deactivated Postcard News’s page.
On July 27, Hegde tweeted the following: “In just a week, why NDTV held 2 panel discussions on me? In just a year, why did DEREK (O’Brien, Trinamool Congress leader) target Postcard twice in RAJYA SABHA? Why BARKA insist to shut Postcard down? Why was I sent to jail, Removed ad source & FB page of POSTCARD? Is this coz POSTCARD hurt these like PILES [sic]?”
He has also tweeted that the journalist Shekhar Gupta licks
Indian politicians and parties ☺ 27.5%
Modi follows around 485 current and former BJP politicians, workers and party handles. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is the most popular BJP politician on this list with 13.2 million followers, ahead of Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj (11.9 million) and Pondicherry Governor Kiran Bedi (11.7 million), with Amit Shah (11.6 million) just missing out on a podium finish.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal (14 million) is the most popular of the 48 non-BJP leaders that the Prime Minister follows, with former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (8.62 million) and Congress Party president Rahul Gandhi (7.55 million) the next two on the list. Of the three, only Kejriwal follows Modi back.
While Modi has called for a Congress-mukt Bharat, in addition to Rahul, he follows a dozen Congress politicians, including Shashi Tharoor, Milind Deora, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Digvijaya Singh, Ahmed Patel and Capt. Amarinder Singh.
Among the lesser known names is former Tamil Nadu BJP (Kanchi) District IT General Secretary, PV Vimal Nair, who states in his bio that he is a followed by the PM. He adds that he is a proud Kshatriyan who “left the chadi kakhi shorts gay gang RSS.”
News organisations and journalists ☺ 7.5%
Modi follows 80 feeds belonging to publications, though there are some repetitions e.g. he follows three different accounts belonging to The Economist. CNN Breaking News is the most popular account he follows, with 54.2 million followers. Modi follows the Times of India, the Economic Times and Times Now, as well the Hindustan Times, Mint, and The Hindu. He follows Fortune but not Forbes, India Today but not Outlook. And yes, he follows NDTV too.
Among the foreign publications Modi follows are The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Financial Times and The Guardian, and wire services Associated Press and Reuters. He does not follow The New York Times but does follow Today in Seychelles newspaper, which is reportedly the Seychelles’s first daily (except Sundays) independent colour paper. In June this year, Modi announced that India was extending Seychelles a USD$100 million credit to develop its defence capabilities, so he’d naturally want to keep an eye out for news from the island. The online publications he follows include OpIndia and Swarajya, as well as Newslaundry and Rediff.
There are roughly 66 journalists that Modi follows too. Rahul Kanwal tops the list with 4.2 million followers, followed by Rajat Sharma with 2.9 million. R Jagannathan and Nupur Sharma, the editorial director and editor of Swarajya respectively, and Sucheta Dalal, the founder of Moneylife can count the Prime Minister as one of their followers. Two satirical news sites, Faking News and The UnReal Times, provide Modi with some humour to leaven the day.
Foreign leaders and politicians ☺ 4%
Modi follows around 85 current and former foreign leaders. Of these, Barack Obama has the most followers with more than 100 million while Donald Trump is next, with 54-million plus. The usual suspects make the list, from Putin, Trudeau, Hollande, and Erdogan, to Hassan Rouhani, Jacinda Ahern and Theresa May.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are some head-scratchers, such as Labour Party member Paymana Assad, who is the Councillor for Roxeth, which forms part of the London Borough of Harrow in Greater London, and Julian Fantino, who describes himself as the “Proud Conservative candidate for Vaughan-Woodbridge”, which is in Ontario, Canada, and who last tweeted in December 2015.
One leader that Modi does not follow is Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain turned Prime Minister.
Sportspersons ☺ 3%
At the time we did our analysis, Modi followed 50 sportspersons, of which 33 were men and 17 women. The majority of the men are current and former India cricketers, ranging from Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar to MS Dhoni and Shikhar Dhawan. He follows two cricketers from Gujarat — Yusuf Pathan, Parthiv Patel and one, Ambati Rayudu, who played for Baroda but comes from Hyderabad. Beyond cricket, he follows wrestlers Yogeshwar Dutt and Sushil Kumar, billiards world champion Pankaj Advani, Olympic medal winning shooters Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang, former world chess champion Viswanathan Anand and tennis player Leander Paes. He also follows three international sportsmen: Brett Lee (who wished the PM happy birthday last year and received a follow-back) and Jonty Rhodes will be familiar names but the third is likely to be a surprise — Mark McMorris, a Scottish snowboarder. Perhaps Modi dreams of learning the half-pipe on Srinagar’s powdered slopes?
The 17 sportswomen he follows represent a wider range of sports. Among them are badminton star Saina Nehwal, boxing legend Mary Kom, table-tennis player Manika Batra, athlete Hima Das, three Phogat sisters in wrestling, a handful of cricketers, including Mithali Raj, and open water swimmer Bhakti Sharma.
Incidentally, Modi follows the Blind Cricket Association of India but not the BCCI, even though he was the Gujarat Cricket Association president prior to becoming Prime Minister.
(per cent of accounts Modi follows)
Narendra Modi Twitter Followers Count Live
Who does NaMo follow on Twitter?
Bureaucrats, Business and Civil Society figures ☺ 2.8%
Topping this group are
Entertainers ☺ 1.5% | Authors ☺ 0.3%
About 30 actors and singers make an appearance.
He also follows RJ Saurabh, a radio jockey based in Gujarat, while farther afield, he follows Magnitude X, a musician based in Atlanta, Georgia whose Twitter bio states “WARNING – I AM A DRUG”. Apparently, the PM is hooked.
Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi are the only mainstream authors he follows. Then you have Vikram Sampath, who is writing a biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, (Sampath has two photos with the PM on his Facebook page), and Rohit Agarwal, who has written a novel called Riding the Raisina Tiger. Publishers Penguin Books rounds out the category.The Rest ☺ 16%
The remaining accounts that Modi follows are a mix of general accounts that support the prime minister and his party (Trust Modi, Amit Shah Army, youth4BJP etc), or generic accounts such as indianhistory pics, TED TALK FANS, History of India (together 7.4 per cent) or those that belong to institutions (8.7 per cent), such as The World Health Organisation, President of India, POTUS, and Niti Ayog, as well as the accounts of India’s embassies around the world. India’s many Indian Institutes of Management are another set of institutions that Modi keeps up with through Twitter.
In 2016, a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly examined how Narendra Modi had used Twitter to craft his public persona. The paper states: “The re-imagination of Modi through social media is all the more important because of his neartotal lack of contact, as Prime Minister, with traditional news media. Outside of prepared speeches at major events, what we see of Modi on social media is almost all we see of him. And yet, Modi comes across as the most interactive Prime Minister the country has ever had.” That’s why the accounts Modi chooses to follow matter, especially when it comes to laypersons. The Prime Minister has chosen to give them his attention, however fleetingly, and thereby let them know he has noticed them and the messages they are sending. It is a form of political signaling that he has proved to be adept at, and a skill his political opponents would do well to emulate.
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The hashtag #ResignModi trended on Monday with tweets roasting the Prime Minister over the Covid resurgence, while the Right-wing ecosystem remained surprisingly subdued in what appeared a tacit acknowledgment of the scale of the crisis and the difficulty of defending the government’s role.
By evening, the hashtag had notched more than 2.38 lakh tweets that bombarded cyberspace with cartoons and graphics showing Narendra Modi fiddling like Roman emperor Nero at a time the glut of Covid bodies has led to crematorium parts melting, pyres being lit on pavements and hospitals staggering the release of the dead.
Several of the tweets were from verified handles linked to the Congress, Trinamul and DMK.
Former Karnataka chief minister P.C. Siddaramaiah wrote: “#Covid19 struggle in India is the reflection of @narendramodi govt. Assuming the govt was caught off guard for the 1st time, What is the status now? The preparedness is hopeless even now!! Modi feels he is bigger than India.”
#Covid19 struggle in India is the reflection of @narendramodi govt.
Assuming the govt was caught off guard for the 1st time, What is the status now?
The preparedness is hopeless even now!!
Modi feels he is bigger than India.#ResignModipic.twitter.com/pEI3DcYlmP
The tweets carried images showing Modi playing musical instruments as pyres burned behind him.
Congress spokesperson Roshni Kushal Jaiswal tweeted a video of herself at a crematorium on the Ganga’s banks in Varanasi. She questioned Modi’s decision to address rallies in Bengal while death plagued his constituency as it did most places in India.
Bengal minister Sujit Bose tweeted a photo of several burning pyres and said: “Dear Mr Prime Minister, last year in March, you assured that Covid situation will be over in next 21 days. This is the picture of April, 2021, more than a year has been passed. This picture shows how incapable you are to serve this country.”
Dear Mr. Prime Minister, last year in March, you assured that Covid situation will be over in next 21 days. This is the picture of April, 2021, more than a year has been passed. This picture shows how incapable you are to serve this country. #ResignModipic.twitter.com/YB1L0Wtp00
— Sujit Bose (@sujitboseaitc) April 19, 2021Narendra Modi Twitter Account
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tej Pratap Yadav said: “When Rome was Burning the Nero was Playing the flute. #ResignModi”
When Rome was Burning the Nero was Playing the flute.#ResignModipic.twitter.com/TRqQy5qqHZ
— Tej Pratap Yadav (@TejYadav14) April 19, 2021DMK medical wing secretary Kanimozhi Somu hit out at health minister Harsh Vardhan for his acerbic reply to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had advised Modi on ways of scaling up the vaccination campaign.
“Dear @drharshvardhan as you are talking Staying updated. Let’s talk about updates now. Kindly update the people of the country why your diplomatic brained government gave permission to ‘Khumbh Mela’ when world countries warned about a second wave?” she tweeted.
Dear @drharshvardhan as you are talking Staying updated. Let’s talk about updates now.. Kindly update the people of the country why your diplomatic brained government gave permission to “Khumbh Mela” when world Countries warned about a second wave? (1/8) @DMK4TN#ResignModipic.twitter.com/wmWTUQ0pp5
— Dr Kanimozhi NVN Somu (@drkanimozhinvn) April 19, 2021“Remember when your government asked people to come out on roads and scream ‘Go Corona Go’ what possible improvement did this government achieve by doing that?
Narendra Modi Twitter Id
“When your PM is addressing people of Bengal he says ‘I’ve never seen such a revolutionary crowd’ and when he addresses the people of the country he says maintain social distancing and wear masks?”
“PS: Kindly don’t respond by saying Congress government did all of this please! We’ve heard enough! So kindly stop pointing your fingers at others and kindly explain what this government has done to the people of the country during this pandemic other than fascist activities.”
Former IPS officer K. Annamalai, who contested the Tamil Nadu election on a BJP ticket, tweeted: “Trust our Hon PM shri @narendramodi ji & his team to get this done. Vaccine to be made available for all adults above 18 from May 1 is something no country can dare to attempt going by the sheer numbers & the challenges right from manufacturing, sourcing & to last mile delivery!”
Trust our Hon PM shri @narendramodi ji & his team to get this done. Vaccine to be made available for all adults above 18 from May 1 is some thing no country can dare to attempt going by the sheer numbers & the challenges right from manufacturing, sourcing & to last mile delivery!
— K.Annamalai (@annamalai_k) April 19, 2021A Tamil news aggregator handle reminded him that Rahul Gandhi had already last week demanded the vaccination of all adults.