Hashtag Tracker: Pro And Anti Modi Tweets As COVID-19 Pandemic Rages

On April 26, both sides of the ideological divide trended three hashtags pertaining to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The three hashtags, #ModiHaiTohMumkinHai, #ModiFailsIndia and #मोदी_का_सिस्टम_ले_डूबा (#ModiKaSystemLeDooba) aimed to either criticise or support the prime minister, even as Twitter users expressed their views on his handling of the ongoing bitter second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Collectively, these tweets appear 25,332 times since April 1, with 6,284 - nearly a quarter - tweets appearing today.

The tweeting across all three trends started since 12AM and accelerated between 9AM - 11AM.

Here's more into the trends.

1. #ModiFailsIndia

This trend is the largest of the lot, with 15,731 tweets since April 1.

This trend has consistently generated tweets with nearly 2,500 tweets yesterday (April 25) and 1,591 at the time of doing this story.

As the name suggests, the trend is primarily being used to criticise the government's handling of the pandemic.

Here's how the trend has been tweeted in April.

The first tweet was tweeted by the user @MGOsmani1 sharp at midnight, who has been copy-pasting the hashtag 121 times over the course of the last few days.

The hashtag has been used by several other parties and verified users of Twitter to criticise the government.

2. #ModiHaiTohMumkinHai

While this hashtag has a total of 3,654 tweets since April 1, 2,324 (or 63%) of them appeared today itself.

Today, this hashtag was revived by an individual at 12:07 am IST. The user, according to his Twitter profile, is based in New Jersey, United States.

The hashtag has been used to hail various recent decisions by the Modi government, such as that of waiving customs duty and health cess on the import of oxygen, to establish oxygen plants in every district, and the government's ability to get foreign governments for supplying health aid.

However, this trend was also used by opponents of the prime minister to go on the offensive against him. More notably, verified accounts of journalists and opposition parties used this hashtag to highlight the state of affairs.

2. #मोदी_का_सिस्टम_ले_डूबा

In this hashtag, the word "system" is a play on the healthcare system that has come under severe pressure, due to the pandemic.

Users of social media have pulled up media outlets for trying to deflect blame on the government by blaming the pandemonium caused due to the pandemic on the "system". This trend thus equates the government to the system.

The trend has 5,937 tweets of which 3,568 tweets originated yesterday on April 25 and the remaining 2,369 originated today.

The first tweet today started at sharp 12AM.

Since then, it has picked up pace later in the morning.

The verified handles associated with various political parties have resorted to using this trend. BOOM found 119 accounts that were verified and were using this trend, with most of them being affiliated to the Congress.