Twitter briefly removed the blue tick or "verified" badge from the personal handle of Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on June 5. The blue tick was restored within a few hours, reportedly when objections were raised by the Vice President's office. The verified status had been removed from @MVenkaiahNaidu for "inactivity", said Twitter. "Inactivity is based on logging in. To keep the account active, the account holder must make sure to log in at least every 6 months,” said Twitter. The last tweet from Naidu's account was on July 23, 2020. Twitter's act of "unverifying" the account of Naidu, a former BJP president who has been Vice President of India since 2017, is controversial in the middle of its confrontation with the government over a range of issues including its stand on new digital rules for social media sites. After flagging "freedom of expression" concerns over the new rules, Twitter appointed an Indian interim grievance redressal officer, but has yet to name a compliance officer and a nodal officer mandated by the Centre's rules. Five senior functionaries of the ruling BJP's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) also lost their blue tick verification badges on Twitter for several hours. RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat, his colleagues Suresh Soni, Arun Kumar, Suresh Joshi and Krishna Kumar were among the accounts that lost the verification badges for some time. Watch the video to know more.
