For many hours today, five top members of the ruling BJP’s spiritual mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), lost their blue tick verification badges on Twitter, after similar action against Vice President Venkaiah Naidu’s personal account, which was reversed on Saturday.
By nightfall, the blue tick had returned for all five RSS officials’ accounts.
According to RSS sources, RSS president Mohan Bhagawat, his colleagues Suresh Soni, Arun Kumar, Suresh Joshi, and Krishna Kumar were among the accounts that lost their verification badges for a period of time today.
The government and Twitter have been at odds since the social media platform labelled some remarks by select BJP officials targeting the opposition Congress as “manipulated.” The blue tick purge has created a new flashpoint between them.
Mr Naidu’s blue tick was reportedly restored within a few hours after the Vice President’s office voiced complaints. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to send Twitter a notice inquiring why this was done without “prior notification.” “This is disobedience to a constitutional position. Twitter intends to put India’s patience to the test “According to official sources.
The RSS operatives’ verification credentials, like Mr Naidu’s, were revoked due to “inactivity” during a recent resurrection of the verification process, which saw Twitter evaluate verified accounts and revoke blue badges from inactive ones, according to NDTV.
According to Twitter’s rules, if you haven’t signed in for six months, your account will be declared inactive and your verification status will be revoked. All of the RSS leaders have not tweeted in a long time. According to an RSS source, their accounts were created to prevent impersonation.
When queried about the action on Venkaiah Naidu’s personal account earlier in the day, Twitter verified the policy, claiming it had been dormant since 2020 and no one has checked in in the previous six months.
Government sources, on the other hand, described it as an abhorrent move against the country’s No. 2 constitutional leader. They noted that previous Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj’s accounts remained authenticated even after their deaths in 2019.
The move signalled a worsening of relations between the government and Twitter, which have been at odds on a number of topics, including the government’s position on new digital laws for social media services and the discrediting of BJP officials’ comments.
