India’s PMO, in a statement, said the Twitter account @PMOIndia has been ‘secured’ by Twitter.
Qaiser Ali, the 19-year-old teenager from Lucknow, inadvertently grabbed the “Prime Minister of India” Twitter handle for half an hour. Later he apologised for taking the handle.
Qaiser still doesn’t understand how it happened, says a blogpost by BBC Trending. He wanted to give his Twitter handle a better name.
He said: “I don’t know how but it came into my mind to check PMO [Prime Minister’s Office] of India, and when I realised it was available, I saved it for myself.”.
The @PMOIndia Twitter account, started by Manmohan Singh, had managed to gather more than a million followers. As he left office, his team decided not to simply hand the account over to PM-designate Narendra Modi.
Instead, on Tuesday, Manmohan’s team renamed and archived the Twitter handle – @PMOIndia was turned into @PMOIndiaArchive.
Narendra Modi’s party, the BJP, which has just won the elections, criticised the move saying the Twitter account was a “national asset”. Modi’s personal verified Twitter account is followed by 4.92 millions.
Why was Qaiser Ali able to grab the account name at all? Accroding to BBC trending post, he happened to sign up for it in the brief window between when the official account name was changed, and the new @PMOIndia handle was created.
On Thursday, India’s PMO, in a statement, said the Twitter account @PMOIndia has been ‘secured’ by Twitter.
It said: “They are assisting in the handover of the same to this office to be available to the incoming PMO administration along with its followers.”
Source: Dhaka Tribune
