Zee Media Bureau

Jaipur: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Congress’ Shashi Tharoor have a common rival - Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot - who is the latest political leader to compete for popularity on the social media.

Considering the immense popularity of Modi and Shashi Tharoor, Gehlot is among the select league of politicians who have joined the social media and use that as an effective medium to connect with a large numbers of net users in India.

While Modi and Tharoor are extremely popular on the social media and their regular tweets provide daily fodder for the ‘news’ crazy national media, Gehlot is not as lucky as them.

The political opponents of the Rajasthan Chief Minister claim that his popularity on the social media is ‘fake’ and question how a majority of his followers can come from Istanbul.

As per a report published by a national daily, the BJP leaders in Rajasthan have alleged that the Chief Minister has bought “Likes" for his official Facebook page, which is operated by a tech team.

The report also quoted BJP spokesperson Jyoti Kiran as saying that the 62-year-old Gehlot`s Facebook page had 2,14,639 `Likes` till June 30. And then there was a steady jump in `Likes` due to which his most popular city - the city with the highest number of followers - changed from Jaipur to Istanbul.

The BJP spokesperson further alleged that Gehlot had bought `Likes` in bulk from IT firms in Istanbul.

Whatever one says, the fresh controversy involving Gehlot has added a new another twist to the BJP-Congress social media war.

The national BJP leadership has also taken a swipe at the Rajasthan Chief Minister with its national spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman tweeting, “Congress social media misadventure in buying `likes` for the Chief Minister`s Facebook account exposed by the Rajasthan BJP. Gehlotji more popular in Istanbul?”

However, Congress has categorically dismissed the BJP charge that Gehlot has bought Like from Istanbul for his official Facebok page.

Congress spokesperson Archana Sharma terms it a conspiracy by the opposition BJP to defame Gehlot.

Sharma went a step further and alleged that the BJP did the same to project Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and now the saffron party is doing it to malign Gehlot.