Twitter removes blue tick from RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat's account, restores later

After Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Twitter on Saturday removed the blue verification tick from the accounts of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat along with four other senior functionaries of RSS. However, it was restored later on.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat, his colleagues Suresh Soni, Arun Kumar, Suresh Joshi, and Krishna Kumar were among the accounts that lost the verification badges, according to sources in RSS. 

Senior RSS functionaries including Mohan Bhagwat had joined Twitter in July 2019. As per RSS sources, the accounts were created to 'check the spread of misinformation by parody accounts'.

The blue tick purge has set up a new flashpoint between the government and Twitter, which have been in an escalating standoff. Last month the social media company classified certain posts by a few BJP leaders targeting the opposition Congress as 'manipulated'.

Earlier in the day, Venkaiah Naidu's blue tick was restored within a few hours, reportedly when objections were raised by the Vice President's office. The Ministry of Electronics and IT is likely to issue notice to Twitter asking why this was done without 'prior intimation'. 

When asked about the move on Venkaiah Naidu's personal account, Twitter confirmed its policy saying the account had been inactive since 2020 and no one had logged in, in the last six months.

Government sources, however, called it an outrageous act against a constitutional head of the country, pointing that accounts of former Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj had stayed verified long after their death in 2019.