The Prime Minister's Office has decided to unblock nearly 10,000 twitter accounts which were blocked by previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government
After receiving nearly 4,000 requests to unblock their twitter accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Office (@PMOIndia) has decided to unblock about 10,000 Twitter handles that were blocked by the former PM, Dr Manmohan Singh's media advisor, Pankaj Pachauri.
A report in DNA quotes a member of Bhartiya Janata Party's (BJP) IT team as saying, "Nearly 2,000 followers have already been unblocked. By the end of this week, we would be able to unblock all the blocked followers. This number is expected to be around 8,000-10,000.”
Some of these accounts, labelled as 'Internet Trolls' were used to poke fun at the UPA, former PM Dr Singh as well as other ruling members of the Congress. Back in 2012, journalists Kanchan Gupta and Shiv Aroor were also blocked from Twitter along with 16 other handles for being partial to the Right wing and speaking against the Congress Government. They were later unblocked following outrage from public regarding 'freedom of speech' and 'freedom of press'.
Among the blocked accounts were also those who were using abusive language against the BJP during the recent Lok Sabha elections. Speaking on this, Economic Times (ET) quoted Vinit Goenka, co-convenor of BJP's IT Cell as saying, “We had blocked some accounts with abusive posts and tweets but with the government in place, it is time to look at interacting with everyone about collective development.”
Narendra Modi, who is extremely active on Twitter with 45 lakh followers, is hoping to interact with everyone, and hence planning to unblock the accounts. According to the ET report, Goenka said “The party now wishes to 'adopt a new policy' on trolls. We have still not decided how to go about abusive posts. But we will consult our members and do the needful. The cell that was managing the accounts of all BJP leaders and campaign units said it was not just them, but Congress too had blocked many accounts during the past few months.”
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