The Congress on Wednesday sought to downplay the controversy over the Prime Minister’s Office’s (PMO) decision to close down its official Twitter account ahead of Narendra Modi taking over and expressed confidence that the new PMO will get the original handle.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is himself an ardent user of the microblogging website, dismissed BJP’s criticism of the PMO’s step as a “storm in a twitter tea cup”. “PMOIndia handle will remain for the new PMO. Twitter authorities will give it to them. It is only the earlier tweets of the previous PM and the PMO that have been archived. So I think the whole controversy is a storm in a twitter tea cup,” he said.
The PMO Twitter handle was changed from @PMOIndia to @PMOIndiaArchive on Tuesday, automatically transferring its content and 1.24 million followers to the new account.The BJP had termed it as “illegal and disgraceful”. It said the original Twitter handle was a “national digital asset” and did not belong to Manmohan Singh. It should have been handed over to the new dispensation as it was, the party said.
At present, the handle @PMOIndia does exist but it makes no mention of its provenance, making it almost impossible to figure out if it is owned by Twitter or a squatter, it maintained.