Amid Twitter war, BJP powers ‘Koo’

New Delhi, February 10

Twitter's defiance against removing all 1,300 handles the government termed incendiary and anti-Indian law is proving to be a boon for Koo, the local alternative to the American microblogging site.

As the government-Twitter war escalates, top ministers and BJP leaders are going all out to promote Koo, a Twitter lookalike, founded less than a year ago by young entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawakt.

A start-up venture based out of Bengaluru, Koo is witnessing sudden surges in following with ministers Piyush Goyal and Ravi Shankar Prasad creating accounts on the desi platform alongside Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra.

The founders of Koo today said they could touch 10 million users this year. Several government departments and ministries are also progressively opening accounts on Koo, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Aatmanirbhar Bharat" mission in mind.

Twitter has pulled off 500 accounts out of 1,300 sought by the government and argued that the rest of the handles were not in conflict with the Indian laws.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT today said it was surprising that Twitter published a public blog explaining its position about the objectionable accounts when it had already sought a meeting with the government and the Secretary, IT, was in the process of scheduling an appointment with Twitter.

The government has sent three notices to Twitter to remove 1,300 accounts allegedly found to be peddling incendiary information around farmers' protests and R-Day events. In the RS, Modi said: “The country needs to be warned against international conspiracies.” — TNS

10Mn subscribers likely by year-end

• Koo is a Twitter lookalike founded a year ago by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawakt
• The app is witnessing sudden surge following several ministers joining it
• Its founders said they could touch 10 million users this year