No, President Ramnath Kovind Did Not Garner 3 Million Twitter Followers In An Hour

The @rashtrapatibhvn handle has merely inherited followers from the official Twitter account for the President of India

Updated on: 25 July 2017 5:03 pm

President of India Ramnath Kovind’s official twitter handle inherited over 3 million followers of former president Pranab Mukherjee, and didn’t gain them in an hour of swearing-in as some news websites said.

Here is a copy by news agency ANI that makes the point, and the story was carried by websites and news organizations as the standard ‘agency copy’ without a fact check.

So, did President Kovind get a clean slate to begin with?

Twitter merely migrated tweets from Pranab Mukherjee’s stint as the President to account@POI13 for archival. President Pranab Mukherjee now has a personalized Twitter account, and will tweet at @CitiznMukherjee. Followers of the President’s official account @rashtrapatibhvn are retained and will also follow @POI13, the archived account for former President Mukherjee. Mukherjee was the first President from India on Twitter.

“Those who were following @RashtrapatiBhvn will now automatically follow BOTH accounts: @RashtrapatiBhvn and @POI13, to facilitate communication from the official President of India account to its audience. Users who do not wish to follow either accounts may unfollow through our normal process,” clarifies Twitter on their blog.

The number of followers @rashtrapatibhavn handle currently has does not exactly mirror the number of followers former President Mukherjee had while in office is because some Twitter users might have 'unfollowed' the @rashtrapatibhavn handle since Kovind took over.

The President's official handle currently has 3.28 million followers.

Mukherjee's archived account has 3.31 million followers.

In fact, gaining over 3 million followers at the afore-mentioned 'Kovind rate' would be some feat. Remember when Edward Snowden joined Twitter?

Can you hear me now?
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015

The Guardian had noted the number of followers Snowden gained in the first half an hour and it stood at close to 70,000. Even at that rate, he wouldn’t have passed a million mark while this is being written. Snowden currently has 3.2 million followers.

Twitter has had issues when Presidents handover official accounts in the past. The social networking platform was abuzz when current US President Donald Trump took over the @POTUS account.