Who tweets for Rahul? Gandhi scion’s pet has the answer

In the recent past, tweets posted by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi have often grabbed headlines. Speculations have rife on whether the Gandhi scion posts his tweets himself, or whether it is done by someone else.

On Sunday, Rahul took to Twitter to take a dig at those raising questions over his tweets. And interestingly, he did so by posting a video of his pet dog, displaying some antics.

Here’s the tweet:

Ppl been asking who tweets for this guy..I'm coming clean..it's me..Pidi..I'm way than him. Look what I can do with a tweet..oops..treat! pic.twitter.com/fkQwye94a5 — Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 29, 2017

The Congress leader has been in news for a sudden rise in his retweets and number of followers. His Twitter handle, @OfficeOfRG, got more than one million new followers between July and September this year.

People in recent past retweeted the Gandhi scion more than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the top two Indian politicians on Twitter.

A brief study into his Twitter account also revealed that many of his followers joined the micro-blogging website in October itself and had not posted a single tweet.

However, one report claimed that alleged 'bots' with Russian, Kazakh or Indonesian characteristic were behind Gandhi's recent popularity on social media as they were routinely retweeting the Congress vice president's tweets.

Gandhi's 'resurgence' on social media also goes hand in hand with another news report claiming that the Congress had roped in Big Data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica for a more targeted digital campaign to woo voters.

On October 15, 'OfficeofRG' retweeted United States President Donald Trump's tweet with a caption 'Modi ji quick, looks like President Trump needs another hug'. The tweet was by October 21 retweeted at least 30,000 times and was liked by as many as 22,000 users. 

An ANI report claimed on Saturday that alleged 'bots' were routinely retweeting RG's tweets. The report added that the content of these twitter timelines comprised merely of retweets and a lack of tweets which could be categorised as an original thought.