Twitter suspends accounts of several Congress netas

NEW DELHI: Even as Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account has remained locked for over five days, the microblogging site on Wednesday night suspended the accounts of several Congress members, including general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal,

AICC

officebearers Ajay Maken,

Sushmita Dev

and

Randeep Surjewala

and Lok Sabha MP and AICC Telangana in-charge Manickam Tagore. The Twitter handle of Rahul’s personal staffer KB Byju was also suspended.


In each case, the notification issued was that the content was found violative of Twitter rules and the user was asked to appeal in case he/she thought it was incorrectly locked.

Rahul’s account was suspended after the government complained that he had violated the law by posting a picture of a family of a minor Dalit girl who had been gang-raped and killed. The new accounts also appear to have been suspended on the same complaint. All the users those whose accounts have been suspended had joined the “Main Bhi Rahul” campaign, launched after Rahul met the girl’s family.

AICC spokesman Pranav Jha said the responsibility for this “illegal action” on Twitter accounts of Congress leaders lay with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and government. He also blamed Twitter.