PMO Twitter handle in code breach?

New Delhi: While the Election Commission has been claiming that it has strictly dealt with all the complaints related to violation of the model code of conduct which is currently in place owing to the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls beginning on April 11, interestingly however, the official Twitter handles of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), home ministry, finance ministry and defence ministry prominently carry the photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ministers as profile pictures respectively on their home pages.

As per norms, photographs of neither the PM nor any of the Cabinet ministers are supposed to be displayed prominently at any government or public platform or space, once the model code of conduct comes into effect. It had come into effect soon after the schedule of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was announced on March 10, 2019.

These four key departments carry the photogr-aphs of the PM Narendra Modi, finance minister Arun Jaitley, home minister Rajnath Singh, and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman as profile pictures on the official Twitter handles of their respective ministries.

Apart from this, the photograph of the Prime Minister is clearly visible on the home pages of the official Twitter handles of the ministries of human resources development (HRD), railways, social justice, and skill development.

The official Twitter handle of the ministry of minority affairs carries the photograph of the minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi conducting a meeting on the home page.

Soon after the Modi-led NDA government came to power in 2014, it became the first Union government since the advent of social media, which opened official Twitter accounts of all the Central government ministries and departments.

What makes this even more glaring is that Twitter handles of all other Union ministries and government departments don’t carry any photograph of the concerned ministers or even the Prime Minister.  

The official Twitter handles of all the Central ministries apart from the ones mentioned above, carry the official emblem of the Union of India, i.e. the four lions atop the Ashoka Chakra as their profile pictures.