Narendra Modi will be sworn in as PM on Monday
The transition from Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi in India's top office has been marred by quibbling over Twitter.
The BJP lashed out at the outgoing Prime Minister's team for resetting Manmohan Singh's account @PMOIndia and renaming it as @PMOIndiaArchive just before Mr Modi, one of India's most twitter-savvy politicians, is to take over. This would mean that the older tweets would be archived.
"It is ungraceful, unethical and illegal in the way outgoing team in @PMOIndia has handled the transition of this National Digital asset. We hope better sense prevails, tweets of outgoing @PMOIndia are archived according to legal procedures and clean transition takes place," the BJP tweeted.
"Isn't @PMOIndia for communication from the Prime Minister's Office? An institutional handle which should continue seamlessly. Surprised!" tweeted BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman.
The party said the account had 1.4 million followers, but they would have to start from scratch because Dr Singh's account had been archived instead of being handed over.
The new @PMOIndia account has only about 3,000 followers at present.
The outgoing Congress' ally Omar Abdullah, a prominent twitter user, commented, "How churlish!!! Just hand over the twitter account. It's not like Dr Manmohan Singh was actually using it himself or will use it much now."
The Prime Minister's office first released a statement in its defence, saying "all our official communications are being archived according to the Right To Information Act."
Later, the PM's Communications Director, Pankaj Pachauri, clarified, "This is an office account and the office continues to manage it. The handover is being facilitated."
Mr Modi is a regular on social media and has not missed sharing a single milestone in his journey to the top office with his 4.2 million followers. He will be sworn in as India's 15th Prime Minister on Monday.
Social media users point out that if Mr Modi's image replaces Manmohan Singh's on the original account of the Prime Minister, then all previous tweets by Dr Singh will have the new PM's face - something both sides may want to avoid.