NEW DELHI: Even as Twitter on Saturday restored the “blue tick” verification of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and other senior RSS members after online protests, Sangh Parivar leaders cited accounts of prominent citizens with blue ticks despite not be being active for months.
BJP saw a pattern in the move that comes close after a controversy over the “manipulated media tag” being attached to the “toolkit” tweets of several party leaders when they attacked Congress for tarnishing the image of PM Narendra Modi and India.
Soon after Bhagwat’s account was de-badged, RSS member Rajiv Tuli tweeted, “As we are discussing the removal of blue tick from these three accounts, @DrMohanBhagwat’ s verification was also removed.
This digital imperialism can’t be tolerated.” Twitter dropped the verified blue tick from the account of Bhagwat, RSS joint general secretaries Krishna Gopal and Arun Kumar, “sampark pramukh” Anirudh Deshpande and ex-general secretary Suresh ‘Bhaiyyaji’ Joshi.
“You misuse neutral platform regulations with blatant partisanship.
You refuse to abide by our laws.
You are a foreign entity openly indulging in domestic political activism.
What next?” said BJP national VP Baijyant Jay Panda.
Right wing handles pointed to several verified accounts which were present on Twitter months after demise of users, including ex-President Pranab Mukherjee, Congress member Ahmed Patel and actor Irrfan Khan.
There was no tweet from the account of Ahmed Patel for the past eight months.
His daughter Mumtaz Patel updated the account name as “Ahmed Patel Memorial”, saying, “After he passed away, as his daughter I log into his account to archive tributes tagging him.” Last tweet from Irrfan’s account was on May 1 last year when family used it to share their grief with fans after the actor passed away.
“Twitter is behaving like East India Company.
Making profits from us but simultaneously supporting Bharat todo (break India) gangs challenging law of the land! It removes blue tick of nationalists but allows it to violators?” said VHP member Vinod Bansal.