PM Decided to Quit Weibo After Decision on Chinese App Ban: Report

As soon as the decision was taken to disallow Chinese apps, Modi had decided that he would be quitting Weibo.

File image of PM Narendra Modi.

(Photo: IANS) 

Hours after it was reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's account on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Weibo, went blank with his posts and comments removed from the handle, ANI reported citing sources that as soon as the decision was taken to disallow 59 Chinese apps in India, Modi had decided that he would be quitting Weibo.

However, according to the report, it took a lot of back and forth to completely remove his posts and photos.

According to ANI's sources, "For VIP accounts, Weibo has a more complex procedure to quit which is why the official process was initiated. For reasons best known to the Chinese, there was great delay in granting this basic permission."

Twitter-like, Weibo was one of the 59 Chinese mobile applications banned by the Indian government on the account of being “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order”.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hindustan Times had reported that the PM's account went blank in China and no post was visible.

PM Modi had joined the micro-blogging site in 2015.

ANI report also said PM Modi had 115 posts on Weibo and that it was decided to manually delete them and after much effort 113 posts were removed.

The prime minister had around 2,44,000 followers on Weibo.

On Monday, Ministry of Electronics and IT, in a statement, said it was "invoking its power under section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 and in view of the emergent nature of threats has decided to block 59 apps since in view of the information available they are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order."

Apart from Weibo, popular apps such as TikTok, UC Browser, SHAREit, etc were among the banned apps.

The ministry did not name China in its statement but the decision came amid ongoing India-China face-off in Ladakh.

(With inputs from ANI & Hindustan Times)