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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now the first Indian to have over 50 million followers on Twitter.
Only two other global political leaders achieved this milestone — former US President Barack Obama (108.4 million) and US President Donald Trump (64 million).
Modi joined Twitter in January 2009, when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Only a few politicians, including Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, were active on Twitter at that point.
Modi’s Twitter handle was not @narendramodi until October 2009. Abhishek Desai, a techie who had registered the twitter handle @narendramodi, handed it over to Modi on October 12, 2009. Modi had then thanked Desai for providing the handle on Twitter.
It took almost 21 months for Modi’s Twitter account to get 1 million followers.
On August 10, 2016, Modi surpassed Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) as the most-followed person on Twitter in India. Modi had 25.2 million followers as on December 5, 2016. Though Modi’s account has crossed 24,500 tweets, the number remained a few thousands between 2009 and 2013 during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Understanding the importance of Twitter, he has used the platform to highlight the potential of the State as an investment destination both on domestic and international platforms.
While launching the Gujarat edition of BusinessLine on May 24, 2013, he had said that social media have given a voice to common people.
In September 2013, the BJP made Modi the Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Following this, he used Twitter to promote various poll-related technology initiatives such as the launch of a mobile app, crowdsourcing of the election manifesto, and the famous Chai Pe Charcha series.
His victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and his famous tweet of May 16, 2014 — “India has won!” — became the ‘golden tweet’ for 2014 in India.
During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he prefixed Chowkidar to his name as part of ‘#MainBhiChowkidar’ campaign on Twitter. Following this, most of his party followers started prefixing Chowkidar to their names on Twitter.
He follows various national and international leaders, some party workers, and some social workers on Twitter.
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