Twittergate: Mystery of PMO's vanishing Twitter followers

A scapegoat called Right to Information?

The PMO's media team gave its explanation in a series of verbose tweets that India's Twitter users took very badly.

"The @PMOIndia account has been vacated to facilitate handover to the new administration," it tweeted. "All official communications are being archived under the RTI (Right to Information) Act." The Twitter account, it added, was part of digital assets belonging to the PMO and access and control would be retained by the PMO.

India's RTI Act does say that all communications should be archived, and available for public reference.

What it does not say, or even imply, is that a Twitter account belonging to an outgoing government has to be moved to an "archive handle" and the next government has to start from a clean slate with zero followers.