Quiet rejoicings were heard amid some Bollywood denizens on hearing the news of Amitabh Bachchan's possible departure from Twitter. 'No more impossibly high Twitter standards to aspire to,' one actor said.

With the Union Budget 2018 being read out in Parliament today, another equally important development may have escaped your attention. So it is with a sense of duty, that we bring you this latest news flash: Amitabh Bachchan has announced that he will be quitting Twitter.

On Wednesday, 31 January, Bachchan tweeted: "Twitter! You reduced my number of followers. Haha! That's a joke. Time to get off from you. Thank you for the ride. There are many 'other' fish in the sea — and a lot more exciting!"

The news agency IANS reported that the superstar took the decision to quit Twitter after his followers' numbers suddenly dropped from 33 million to 32.9 million. This brings him on the same level as Shah Rukh Khan, who also has exactly 32.9 million Twitter followers.

Salman Khan has 30.7 million followers on the micro-blogging site, Deepika Padukone is at 23 million, Aamir Khan has 22.8 million and Priyanka Chopra's follower count is 21.6 million.

It is not clear if Bachchan — a prolific tweeter — was actually serious about quitting the site or meant his remark as a jest.

While we can only conjecture if emails flew amid executives at the Twitter offices, bemoaning the loss of a superstar influencer from their midst, trusty sources revealed that there were sighs of relief amid some quarters in Bollywood.

"No more worrying if I'm going to be admonished on Twitter for not replying to that birthday message Bachchan uncle sent," an actress who starred in the best film to come out of Bollywood in 2017 told us in the strictest confidence. She may have danced a little jig around her bedroom as she told us this.

"He was so on-top of Twitter, what with his regular updates that were clearly not sent out by a bot, and with responding to fans, that he set impossible standards for us all," said another top Bollywood actor, on condition of anonymity, who played a partly-fictional, partly-inspired-by-real-life character in a film not too long ago. He promptly went back to okaying the promotional tweets for his upcoming film, helpfully put together by his team.

Fans of the actor (Bachchan, not the one who played the partly-fictional, partly-inspired-by-real-life character in a film not too long ago) expressed their grief at missing out on their daily dose of tweets from his handle. "Amid the sea of 'Twitter celebrities', Amitabh Bachchan was a real celebrity, you know?" one fan said, even as she frantically scrolled through Bachchan Sr's tweets, taking screen shots so she could save them for posterity. She wiped a tear away as she came across a particularly nostalgic old tweet, in which the actor had dwelt on age, life, death, the Universe, the film industry — all in 140 characters. We then saw her surreptitiously switching to @iamsrk's timeline.

Bachchan maintained a statesman-like presence on Twitter, tweeting out a steady stream of insights into his state of mind, his film career, and social etiquette. His leaving Twitter will leave it several tweets short.

(Disclaimer: This report may be taken in the same spirit as Bachchan Sr's tweet about quitting Twitter. It may be true. Then again, it may not.)