In a rather surprising move, the White House, late on Tuesday night, decided to unfollow the only world leader that it had been following on micro-blogging platform Twitter – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A section of the media in India reported this early on Wednesday.
The White House currently follows just 13 accounts and has 22 million followers on Twitter.
‘The official Twitter account of White House, the residence and workplace of the president of the United States, doesn’t follow Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi anymore on the micro-blogging site,’ reported outlookindia.com on Wednesday.
The same was reported by another current-affairs magazine, India Today, and television news portal NDTV.com
On April 11, Modi was the only world leader who was being followed by the White House, reports said.
Besides the Indian prime minister, the White House also followed the official Twitter handles of the president of India, the Indian Prime Minister’s Office and the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. However, all these accounts have now been unfollowed by the White House, according to Indian media.
Earlier this month, United States President Donald Trump had warned India of “retaliation” after New Delhi decided to put a ban on the export of Hydroxychloroquine, a medicine believed to be crucial in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Soon thereafter, the Indian government had decided to partially ease the ban and allowed the medicine to be exported to the US. This was followed by a note of thanks to the Indian PM by the US president.
Even during Trump’s first official visit to India as the president of the US, in late February this year, the camaraderie between him and the Indian PM was quite noticeable.
Given the background, the sudden decision by White House to unfollow Modi on Twitter has come as a surprise.
Fact Check
People were trolling Narendra Modi on Twitter. An Indian Twitter user Gaurav Pandhi wrote while trolling Arnab Goswami, his Tweet Reads: “Arnab Goswami tonight: “INDIA WANTS TO KNOW. WHY HAS TRUMP & WHITE HOUSE BLOCKED PM MODI ON TWITTER. SONIA GANDHI MUST ANSWER”.
However, after looking on the reports of various news channels and media outlets, some people after looked upon the official Twitter account of the white house, claimed that Modi is still followed by the White house. They shared a screenshot shown in the picture below, from the white house following list.
Our team investigated into the screenshot shared by several Indians and found that it was taken from the old list of people being followed by the White house.
The Twitter account shows that the white house is following only 13 people instead of 19 as reported by Indian media. In the list of Twitter accounts followed by White house, Narendra Modi’s personal Twitter account and his official Twitter account (PMO INDIA are not there.
People who are seeing both accounts of Modi in the list, need to count the number of accounts being followed by the White House or they should refresh their Twitter in order to see the recent Twitter accounts in the following list of White house. See the Screenshot below.
