When compared in terms of percentage growth in number of followers so far in 2014, BJP's Arun Jaitley tops the chart (269 per cent), followed by Anurag Thakur from same party (256 per cent), Kumar Vishwas (102 per cent), Kejriwal (63 per cent) and BJP's Smriti Irani (60 per cent). "Twitter has enabled people to discover leaders, parties and issues that are most meaningful to them, connect with them and express their opinion, which was not the case in the earlier elections.
"Political leaders are using Twitter to communicate with their constituents, break news, shape discourse and influence opinion," says Raheel Khursheed, Head - News, Politics & Govt @TwitterIndia. The data further shows that Gul Panag of AAP leads the charts in terms of Twitter activity with over 78,000 tweets since the day she joined Twitter. Swamy, known for his strong views, comes second with nearly 30,000 tweets and Derek O'Brien of Trinamool is placed third with about 25,000 tweets, followed by Tharoor at fourth with around 21,900 and Abdullah at fifth spot with over 6,500 tweets. "As far as the ongoing elections go, a platform like ours for live, public conversations will continue to play a consistent and central role in a democracy where every Indian citizen wants to have an equal say. This is truly a Twitter election," adds Khursheed. Interestingly, both Modi and Kejriwal -- pitted against each other from Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency -- haven't crossed the 5,000 tweet mark. Neither Congress chief Sonia Gandhi nor her son Rahul, the party vice president, is present on Twitter. In terms of political parties, the twitter handle of AAP is the most popular, beating the likes of BJP and Congress. While AAP has 6.2 lakh followers, BJP has 4.3 lakh and Congress 1.67 lakh. Smaller parties like National Conference and Trinamool are also present with modest followings. However, BJP is the most vocal on Twitter among parties with nearly 44,000 tweets, followed by AAP with 16,400 tweets and Congress with 3,000-odd tweets.
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