In this era of digital campaigning, no political party or leader wants to be left behind; and neither do their supporters.

With the country in the middle of its biggest democratic exercise, India Today's Data intelligence Unit (DIU) takes a look at the traction which the current crop of Lok Sabha MPs and cabinet ministers attract with their tweets. Between October 1, 2018, and April 30, 2019, we also analyse who gets retweeted the most.

Interestingly, despite having 47.1 million followers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is left behind by Congress president Rahul Gandhi (with 9.34 million followers) when it comes to retweets. Gandhi's tweets, on an average, were retweeted 7,662 times, which is 2.5 times more than Modi's average retweet count of 2,984.

DIU analysed more than 2,68,000 tweets from verified Twitter accounts of 224 Lok Sabha MPs and cabinet ministers, of which, 160 belong to the BJP.

Apart from Gandhi and Modi, the average retweet counts of cabinet ministers Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley crossed 1,000. Piyush Goyal and Rajnath Singh come next in line.

Dimple Yadav from Samajwadi Party is the second most retweeted opposition MP, followed by Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi.

Who are the most followed?

Narendra Modi tops this list with over 47 million Twitter followers, followed by Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj.

Rahul Gandhi stands at number 5 followed by his party colleague Shashi Tharoor. Among the top 20 most followed handles in the list, 17 belong to the BJP. Jyotiraditya Scindia is the third opposition MP in the top 20.