Rahul Gandhi's new unfollow list on Twitter grabs attention

Rahul Gandhi now follows football legend Pele, documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, economist Kaushik Basu and former cricketer Anil Kumble among 219 people on Twitter, but what made headlines on Wednesday was the people whom he unfollowed on the social media.

The list included journalists like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai and his aides working in his office, and it even led to an online live audio discussion on social media platform 'Club House' moderated by one of his supporters, who was also unfollowed.

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At present, Rahul has 18.8 million followers and he is following 219 accounts till late Wednesday night. He had started the "purge", as a Congress functionary put it, on Tuesday.

Among those who were unfollowed by Rahul also include AltNews co-founder Pratik Sinha, his close aide Nikhil Alva and other staff members, besides a number of reporters covering Congress among others.

Most of the handles now he follows are party leaders or party-related handles and intellectuals like Basu or sportspersons like Pele and Kumble. He also continues to follow former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, lawyer Karuna Nundy and others.

Sanjukta Basu, a staunch supporter of Rahul Gandhi and Consulting Editor with National Herald tweeted, "including me, Rahul Gandhi has unfollowed almost every media person such as Barkha, Nidhi (Razdan), Sardesai, etc. and is now only following Congress leaders, Congress unit handles, and a few very renowned activists and people. Cleaning up his timeline."

A TV journalist who covers Congress, Pallavi Ghosh tweeted, “It’s totally a leaders’ prerogative to follow unfollow- but the way done reflects distrust of a professional or profession u also need to take along (sic).” Ghosh was unfollowed by Gandhi.

Among the journalists, he is still following P Sainath and Mrinal Pande and a few others. However, he has chosen to unfollow activist Harsh Mander and comedian Kunal Kamra among others.