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VIJAYAWADA: In a major blow to the Jana Sena’s Twitter presence, the micro-blogging site has suspended around 300 accounts linked to the party citing ‘platform violation and spam’ on Tuesday. Some of the accounts that have a large following have been lost with party workers alleging that political foul play is involved behind the suspension.

Party workers associated with the social media wing claimed that the suspension is a reaction towards their online campaign against proposed uranium mining in the Nallamala forest. Sources said that the party has around 400 active Twitter accounts of which close to 300 have been suspended. The registered email IDs associated with the suspended accounts have received emails citing ‘platform violation and spam’ and content that goes against Twitter’s guidelines.

The remaining 100-odd accounts have begun an active campaign against the move under the hashtags #BringBackJSPSocialMedia and #SaveSocialMediaRights. One of the biggest blows for the party has been the loss of their highly popular Shatagni account which was used to issue instructions to other party Twitter accounts across Andhra Pradesh.

While party sources claim that they have not indulged in any illegal, derogatory or hate speech, Twitter’s policy states that any ‘coordinated activity, that attempts to artificially influence conversations through the use of multiple accounts, fake accounts, automation and/or scripting, can attract a suspension.’ The policy aims to weed out accounts that create artificial trends or influence opinion through the use of multiple accounts.

Meanwhile, Jana Sena officials admit that most of the Twitter accounts that were suspended had tweeted against the Centre’s plan to mine uranium in Telangana’s Nallamalla forest.

The party, however, suspects that there is a political conspiracy involved as other coordinated campaigns run by them in the past, such as the recent #YSJAGANFAILEDASCM, saw no action being taken. However, the #SaveNallamalla campaign that was started three days ago received many reactions, including from Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s son KT Rama Rao and others.

