Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh
Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh | Photo: Sondeep Shankar | Bloomberg
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New Delhi: Social media users have called out Twitter for its lax enforcement of rules  after a fake account of former prime minister Manmohan Singh lead to much confusion on the micro-blogging site.

Senior journalist Umashankar Singh Friday asked Twitter to check if the account “@_manmohan_singh” was real.

Created Wednesday (17 June), the bio of the Twitter handle read: “Indian economist, academic, and politician served as the 13th Prime Minister of India.”

It began posting tweets that said “INDIA NEEDS STRONG PM WHO CAN PROTECT OUR COUNTRY!”, “The future is inherently uncertain” and “Bankers play politics”.

Not only Singh, many others also alerted the microblogging site to see if it was an authentic account. People also asked Twitter to verify the account with a blue tick or take note if it was a fake one.

But the account handler soon changed the bio to “Manmohan Singh Fansclub”.

Responding to Singh’s tweet, AltNews’ founder Pratik Sinha noted that making an account which impersonated a famous individual was the most common strategy used by people to gain followers on Twitter. He also highlighted Twitter’s incompetence in these matters.

Sanjaya Baru responds to parody account’s tweet

The parody account did manage to confuse Singh’s former advisor Sanjaya Baru (who is also the author of The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh).

Baru responded to a tweet where the parody account paid condolences to economist B.P.R. Vithal, who the account noted was a philosopher and guide to many a chief ministers and policy makers.

“Heartfelt condolences, Sanjaya @Barugaru1 I know how difficult it is for you to bear the loss,” the user of the parody account wrote.

To this, Baru responded saying, “Sir, thank you. My respectful regards, Sanjaya. ”

People first began suspecting if the account was fake after it posted some controversial tweets, saying “When I was the finance minister, I got on well with the RBI Governor ” and “Almost 90% Hindu’s in Tamil Nadu. BJP doesn’t get 1 seat. Their children go to NASA, Google, Microsoft, not to RSS”.

Recently, two other accounts were made in Nobel laureate and economist Abhijit Banerjee’s name. He had to later clarify that he was not on Twitter and both accounts were fake. They were then suspended by the microblogging site.