Twitter restores verified blue tick of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s personal account

Twitter on Saturday restored the blue verification badge of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s personal account, hours after removing it. The micro-blogging site also restored the verification badge of other key functionaries of the Sangh including Krishna Gopal.

The blue verification badge on Twitter denotes that the account of a person or an organisation is authentic. Twitter has said the badge is removed if an account becomes inactive.

Mohan Bhagwat’s Twitter handle has over 215,400 followers and he only follows the official profile of the RSS. Bhagwat has not posted any tweets/retweets or shared any photos or videos yet.

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Earlier on Saturday, sources in the RSS told news agency ANI that for the past several days, Twitter had removed the verification badge from the accounts of famous Sangh leaders including Arun Kumar, former general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, and former leader Suresh Soni, which got verified in 2019.

RSS leaders do not use their Twitter handles and the verification was only done to separate them from the fake ones, according to a report by Hindustan Times on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Twitter on Saturday also removed and then restored the verification badge of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu’s personal account, citing that it had been inactive since July last year. “As per our verification policy, Twitter may remove blue verified badge and verified status if the account becomes inactive. Badge has been restored,” a company spokesperson said.

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This event of removal and restoration of verification badges of Twitter handles comes at a time when the United States based tech giant is facing the ire of the Indian government over its non-compliance of the new Information Technology (IT) rules, which were supposed to come into effect on May 25. On Saturday, the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) issued another letter to Twitter and said this is the last chance to comply with the new rules.