Bhopal: The instructions passed by BJP’s national president Amit Shah to the ministers for active use of social networking site twitter, has put them in tight spot. These politicians who claim to have admirers all over the state in lakhs have failed to get even a satisfying number of followers on twitter.
While, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has over 3.4 million followers, none of his cabinet colleagues have crossed the mark of fifty thousand followers. A number of Chouhan’s ministerial colleagues have followers in two digits. Minister Umashankar Gupta has 65 followers, Jayant Malaiya follows him with 56 followers, while Maya Singh has 53, Sharad Jain 54, Suryaprakash Meena could have garner only 42 followers.
The ministers who have less than a thousand followers on twitter includes Kusum Mehdele, she can boast of having as many as 933 followers. Gaurishankar Bisen has 414 followers, Archana Chitnis 754, Deepak Joshi 474, while Antar Singh Arya has only 364 persons who follows him on twitter.
The ministers who can boast of maintaining most number of followers after the CM include Surendra Patwa whose followers stand at 35000 followed by Sanjay Pathak with 31500 followers. Minister Vishwas Sarang has 25300 followers, Rajendra Shukla has 23800, Bhupendra Singh 15300, while Paras Jain has 10700 followers.
In all 5952 persons follows minister Narottam Mishra on twitter, 4079 follows Lal Singh Arya, 2390 follow Gopal Bhargaw, while Yashodhara Raje Scindia has only 1729 people following her on the networking site. An unusual pattern which is clearly seen in terms of followers is that the ministers who represent rural areas have garnered more numbers than those who come from urban constituencies.
BJP state president Nand Kumar Singh Chouhan and organisational general secretary Suhas Bhagat have also started using the site following post instructions of Shah.
The enthusiasm of Bhagat has escalated to a level that he not only follows Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Akhilesh Yadav but is also a follower of Bollywood actresses including Bipasha Basu, Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawala. Chouhan and Bhagat have 10,000 and 8000 followers respectively.
Did not create account despite instructions
There are as many as 7 such ministers who have failed to create their twitter accounts despite clear direction from party national chief Shah and chief minister Chouhan. Gaurishankar Shejwar, Vijay Shah, Rampal Singh, Rustam Singh, Paras Jain, Jaibhan Singh Pawaiya, Lalita Yadav and Harsh Singh are yet to sing up on the site.
