Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of the most followed personalities in India, said he was thinking of giving up his social media accounts. “This Sunday, thinking of giving up my social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube,” PM Modi tweeted late on Monday evening.

“Will keep you all posted,” PM Modi said.

PM Modi, who is among the most-followed political leaders in the world on Twitter, has 53.3 million followers on the social microbloggingsite. He is the most followed leader on Facebook and Instagram, with 44 millionfollowing his page on Facebook and 35.2 million following him on photo andvideo sharing app Instagram. On YouTube, he has 4.5 million subscribers.

The prime minister did not explain the reasons that provokedhim to consider quitting social media but it led to a barrage of requests fromhis supporters to request him to revisit his stand. His political rivalsjeered. “Give up hatred, not social media accounts,” former Congress presidentRahul Gandhi said, echoing his party’s criticism of the Bharatiya Janata Partyleaders over the recent violence in national capital Delhi.

In 30 minutes, not surprisingly, PM Modi’s tweet had evokedmore replies - 13,000 replies - than (9,000) retweets.

Prime Minister Modi was one of the early national politicalleaders to have realised the potential of social media to reach out to people,collaborating with volunteers to spread his message during election campaignsand later.

PM Modi’s government has announced most important decisionson social media over the last five years or so and had, in the early months ofthe first edition of the NDA government in 2014, nudged his ministerial colleaguesto embrace social media.

The election that he had swept months earlier was India’sfirst where political parties had also partnered with mobile and media firms todistribute tweets online and offline.

Twitter had emerged as a political tool first during the2012 US presidential elections, and then during the Arab Spring uprisings in NorthAfrica and the Middle East.

His tweet celebrating the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victoryin Lok Sabha polls was the most retweeted and liked tweets last year and wasacknowledged as India’s ‘Golden Tweet’ of 2019.