PM Narendra Modi quits Chinese micro-blogging website Weibo, all posts, profile picture removed

Days after India announced its decision to 59 Chinese apps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to quit Sina Weibo, a Chinese micro-blogging website, which he had joined a few years ago.

On Wednesday, PM's account went blank after his profile photo, posts and comments were removed from the handle.

For VIP accounts, Weibo has a more complex procedure to quit which is why the official process was initiated. However, there was great delay in granting this basic permission.

PM Modi had 115 posts on Weibo and it was decided to manually delete them. After much effort, 113 posts were removed. The two posts left are posts where PM has photos with Chinese President Xi Jinping. On Weibo, it is difficult to remove posts with the photo of their President which is why the two posts still remain. 

The border tension between the countries escalated on June 15 when 20 Indian Army personnel were martyred after violent clashes with Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Galwan Valley of eastern Ladakh.

After the June 15 clashes, while China has acknowledged casualties on their side, it has not specified the numbers. Beijing has not made any official statement on the casualties suffered by the People's Liberation Army during the face-off with the Indian Army.

India, on its part, categorically rejected Beijing’s untenable claims regarding the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and said that it contradicts its earlier stand on the issue. The Minister of External Affairs claimed that since early May 2020, the Chinese side has been hindering India's normal, traditional patrolling pattern in the area.

“Since early May 2020, Chinese have been hindering India's normal patrolling pattern in the area. This resulted in face-off which was addressed by ground commanders. We don't accept the contention that India was unilaterally changing status quo, we were maintaining it,” the MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said.

He also added that the “Indian troops are fully familiar with the alignment of the LAC in all sectors of India-China border areas, including the GalwanValley. They abide by it scrupulously here, as they do elsewhere.”

The MEA Spokesperson also categorically rejected China’s claim that India was unilaterally changing the status quo. Taking further retaliatory steps, The Narendra Modi government on Monday imposed a ban on 59 Chinese mobile Apps.