BHUBANESWAR: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday came down heavily on Odisha Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik saying that the CM had “bought” followers in his Twitter account (@Naveen_Odisha) to flaunt his social media clout in the state. State BJP general secretary Bhrugu Baxipatra said most of the followers in Naveen’s Twitter handle were fake and dubious.
He also alleged that thousands of paid followers, who don’t even know what Twitter is all about, had been added as followers in the CM’s micro-blogging site. “Naveen had only 1.5 lakh followers in his Twitter account till June, 2017 but in just two months – July and August – it touched a whopping 6.76 lakh. This shows the scale of goof-up in CM’s Twitter account,” the saffron leader observed. The BJP state unit alleged that the CM’s Twitter account adds as many as 9,000 followers daily during July-August period while the entire state has not more than three lakh Twitter users.
“The CM’s Twitter handle shows it has an average 2.5 tweets per day and with this, how Patanik has accumulated over 6.72 lakh followers so far,” the BJP leader questioned. Now, Naveen must answer how he has got so many followers in a short span of time, Mr Baxipatra demanded. The BJD reacted sharply on the allegation taking a dig at PM Modi’s Twitter followers.
“We all know that Naveen Patnaik’s popularity has grown and increasing day by day. There is nothing unusual in the rise of his twitter followers. It shows that the BJP is now shocked after Mr Patnaik won the best administrator award recently,” said BJD leader Amar Prasad Satpathy. Worth mentioning, Patnaik, who had joined Twitter in September, 2015, has the highest number of followers among politicians in Odisha followed by Union minister and poster boy of BJP in Odisha Dharmendra Pradhan with 4.97 lakh and BJD’s Kendrapara MP Baijayant Panda with 2.86 lakh.
