Amid tiff with the Centre over the new IT Rules, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday, 12 July, briefly lost the blue 'verified' badge on Twitter, a development that the social media giant attributed to a change in his handle name. The status was restored later.
While Twitter has not officially commented on the development, Twitter sources told ANI that the change of the handle's name could be the reason.
How Does Change in Handle Name Affect Verified Status?
According to Twitter's verification policy, if a user changes the username, the blue verification badge gets removed.
Chandrasekhar was earlier using @rajeev_mp as his username which was changed to @Rajeev_GoI.
Earlier, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu had lost the blue tick from his personal account due to inactivity for over six months, according to Twitter's policy. The status was restored within a few hours.
Earlier Instances With India's Leaders
After Naidu, Twitter on 25 June had temporarily denied access to former IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for almost an hour over a compliant of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice for content posted on his Twitter account. The copyright claim was for a video tweeted by the minister, using words from AR Rahman's ‘Maa Tujhe Salam’ track in December 2017.
However, Prasad had alleged that his statements, calling out the "high-handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter had clearly ruffled its feathers".
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