A handful of fake accounts impersonating the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind have sprouted on Twitter in the last few days even as Kovind's office confirmed to BOOM that he is not present on social media yet.
While some of the handles are fan or parody accounts, the description of some of the other fake handles are ambiguous and misleading. These handles mostly retweet official verified BJP accounts and tweets from senior BJP leaders, however some of these fake accounts take aim at opposition parties. The below tweet has now been deleted but we took a screenshot while it was visible.
The fake accounts also tweet life advice and quotes that are meant to be inspirational.
The accounts impersonating Ram Nath Kovind are not verified with followers in the range of about 1000 to 6500. One of the fake accounts @iRamnathKovind has a pinned tweet that urges his/her followers to retweet if they want to see him become the next president of India. The account was created on June 14, 2017.
When BOOM questioned the authenticity of the account, it suddenly disappeared.
But the handle soon reappeared as @KatrinaKaifPost. BOOM had earlier followed @iRamnathKovind to keep track of its tweets and when @KatrinaKaifPost surfaced, it already showed us as following the account.
Like @iRamnathKovind, @KatrinaKaifPost was also created on June 14, 2017 leading us to conclude that it is run by the same person.
Another fake account @ramnathkovind's Twitter description says 'NDA Presidential Candidate'. This account was created on January 26, 2016 in New Delhi.
Other handles like @ramnkovind seem to be crafting an image of Kovind's public persona. The account @ramnkovind was created on June 19, 2017.
The person operating the handle seems to have forgotten that there is still an election pending.
Fake account , whose Twitter description reads as 'Official Account Of Governor of bihar . Presidential candidate of NDA ' was created on June 19, 2017 in New Delhi.
BOOM created a list to help people identify fake Ram Nath Kovind accounts.
BJP president Amit Shah announced the name of Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA's) presidential candidate on June 19th. Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is extremely Twitter savvy has not tagged a single Ram Nath Kovind account, in his tweets about BJP's nominee.
Fake handles on Twitter are a menace and are skewing the political debate apart from spreading fake news in India. Earlier this week, BOOM wrote a story on how several fake Twitter accounts were defending Rajathan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's tweet on the lynching of Zafar Khan. Some of these accounts have since been deactivated.