Shashi Tharoor has 1 mn Twitter followers, only Sachin ahead

There is hardly a time when diplomat-turned politician Shashi Tharoor is not in the news.

Thiruvananthapuram: There is hardly a time when diplomat-turned politician Shashi Tharoor, the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP, is not in the news. He now has over one million followers on social networking site Twitter and only batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar is above him, his office said Friday.

The one million mark was crossed Thursday and currently stands at 1,001,735, Tharoor`s office said in a statement. Tendulkar, who crossed his one million last week and with 1,051,793 followers, leads the Indian twitterati. Tharoor responded by tweeting: "Thanks for all your congratulatory messages on reaching one million followers. It`s been an interesting journey and I`ve been glad to have you along." An early adapter to Twitter, Tharoor was a trailblazer among Indian politicians in using it as an interactive medium to connect with people. It also brought him quite some criticism when he remarked on travelling cattle class by air. Some of the celebrity Indian Twitters and their followers are Priyanka Chopra (960,194), Shah Rukh Khan (863,354) and Amitabh Bachchan (722,270). Among the other Keralites who have a following are cricketer Sreesanth (172,132) and film superstars Mohanlal (60,167), Mammootty (43,883) and Prithviraj 29,618. IANS