Outgoing Akhilesh govt wipes clean Twitter posts, clarifies tweets archived, not deleted

All the tweets from the Uttar Pradesh’ government twitter handle UP Government has been deleted. The handle has also unfollowed many accounts.

As the dust settles in Uttar Pradesh after the Samajwadi Party’s crushing defeat at the hands of BJP in the assembly elections, Tuesday morning saw an unusual activity from the UP government IT cell. All activities from UP government social media handles suddenly disappeared from their timelines.

Akhilesh Yadav has resigned as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh after his Samajwadi party lost the assembly elections. (HT File Photo)

However, later in the day, the official government Twitter handle @CMOfficeUP put out a clarification saying that the tweets were archived, not deleted.

All the tweets from the Uttar Pradesh’ government Twitter handle @CMOfficeUP have been deleted. The handle has also unfollowed many accounts. The other Twitter handle of CM Office, Uttar Pradesh, registered itself to an online service called ‘DeleteAllTweets.com’ to delete all the tweets.

The other social media handle which saw a flurry of posts being deleted is UP News 360. The UP News 360 was an initiative by Department of Information & Public Relation, Uttar Pradesh to make all latest news and headlines available to public. The www.upnews360.in website also appears not to be working.

When Hindustan Times contacted the UP state information and public relations department head Sudhesh Kumar Ojha, he had no clue of what is happening. “I have no information on this,” he said. HT then contacted the IT department, while the Secretary of IT & Electronics was busy in the meeting his assistant told that the government social media accounts are managed by the Chief Minister’s office.Several attempts were made to contact the UP Chief Minister’s office but the calls were not answered.

Earlier in the day, a senior journalist tweeted pointing out the tweets being deleted by the UP government.

In 2014, When former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demitted his office, his staff archived the contents on another Twitter account, leaving @pmoindia available to public. A teenager from Lucknow briefly held it before Twitter took it back from him.

Author’s twitter bio is @rizviuzair