DNA Exclusive: Rahul Gandhi's prime concern - Twitter followers, not vote & support

Social media giant Twitter has a policy of detecting and removing fake user profiles. The company, at regular intervals, deletes the accounts that seem non-genuine, fake or in technical terms - Bots. It's a basic social media exercise that's known to everyone.

However, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is worried over the issue of fall in his Twitter followers. The former Congress president has written a letter to Twitter's India chief and asked for probing the matter.

In today's DNA exclusive, Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary analyses the shift in priorities of India's grand old party and its leaders - who seem to be more worried about the fall in the number of social media followers instead of their support base and voters.

Rahul Gandhi, in his letter to Twitter, has said that his followers have not gone up after August 2021, which according to him is an unusual trend. The Congress leader also says that social media has come up as an important source for dissemination of information for Opposition parties, as, according to him, the mainstream media doesn't represent their views judiciously these days.

Here, Rahul Gandhi fails to understand one point - he should be worried more about the fall in the number of his actual voters and supporters, than the number of people who follow him on social media.

It is interesting to know that Twitter has no dedicated staff to add or remove fake followers.

And, interestingly, no actual person has ever turned up complaining that he used to follow Rahul Gandhi and his account has been deleted by Twitter.  

The Congress and Rahul Gandhi should ideally be worried on two accounts - 1) Why their leaders are leaving the party  2) Why is their vote share keep falling in the elections.

Between the year 2014 - 2021, 222 leaders left the Congress party. This included 177 MPs/MLAs.

In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Congress bagged a massive 28 per cent votes share, this fell down to 20 per cent in the year 2014 and situation remained almost the same in the year 2019.

But, have you ever seen Rahul Gandhi worried about this? No, he is worried about the Twitter followers.