Row over PMO Twitter handle

After the electoral drubbing, the Manmohan Singh administration is now walking out of the office with a controversy as it renamed the existing Twitter account of Prime Minister’s Office as @PMOIndiaArchive, leaving the BJP fuming.

As the BJP and NDA formally elected Narendra Modi as the prime minister, the managers in the outgoing PMO said a new handle @PMOIndia would be in place soon. They reset the official account @PMOIndia to @PMOIndiaArchive on Tuesday. 

Already, a @PMOIndia is on twitter but the BJP termed it the work of an “unknown joker” whom neither the Modi’s team nor BJP know.

The catch is that the 1.4 million followers, which has already subscribed to it, will not be automatically transferred to the new account and the new PMO will have to start from the scratch. The @PMOIndia handle had last tweeted on May 18, the address to the nation by Singh.

Using this Twitter handle, the PMO had tweeted 4,506 times. The introduction of the reset Twitter handle read, “Archival material under the RTI Act for @PMOIndia till 20/5/2014. @PMOIndia will be available shortly”.

Singh’s Media Advisor Pankaj Pachauri defended the move in a tweet, “An advisory — All our official communications are being archived according to the RTI Act. Copyrights and control remain with the office.”

The move left the BJP fuming with party leaders questioning the decision, saying it was “unethical, ungraceful and disgraceful”. The Twitter world was also on rage with several people criticising the move.

Already, an unverified handle @PMOIndia has been created, which has around 6,000 followers at 7:30 pm. Arvind Gupta, head of the BJP IT Cell, described it as one created by an “unknown joker”.

He said the Twitter account is a national asset and the move was “ungraceful and unethical”.