The presidential election in India is going to take place in July 2022. The ruling alliance that is the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance and the united opposition – both the camps have declared their candidates. Yashvant Sinha is the opposition candidate whereas Draupadi Murmu is the NDA candidate.
As Draupadi Murmu was a comparatively less-known name and she was not much active on social media before, many social media users, rather misusers, have made fake social media accounts in her name. Especially Twitter is flooded with scores of such accounts. These social media users have not stopped just by making the accounts in her name. They have also continued to post pretending that the account is a real account of Draupadi Murmu.
Many of such accounts are old, which means they were created with other names and later changed the name to Draupadi Murmu after NDA announced her as the candidate for the alliance. While some of such accounts are parody accounts, most of them are pretending to real accounts. If one searches on Twitter for ‘Draupadi Murmu’ and goes to the ‘people’ tab in the search results, hundreds of fake accounts of the presidential candidate can be seen. A sample of such search result is given below:
Most of the IDs or handles of these accounts have the words Draipadi Murmu along with random numbers or letters, as more than one account can’t have the same account ID. All of them have the display picture of the presidential candidate, showing that they are fake accounts, not real accounts with other people with the same name.
One such profile is the account with the Twitter handle @draupadimurmupr has hailed BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan for his appeal to the people of Odisha to reduce the single-use plastic in the upcoming Jagannath Rath Yatra.
Another Twitter handle @_draupadimurmu thanked sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik for the creative way he gave best wishes to the presidential candidate of NDA.
Most of these accounts have put the photos in which Draupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are seen. In order to appear like a true account, these handles have also posted every little development in the election procedure. Besides, a few have also shared the updates on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official foreign visits.
There are also some accounts that are posting content that may provoke public sentiments and may lead to social disturbances. One such account with Twitter handle @DraupadiMurmu1 has posted, “It will be my first duty to make India a Hindu Nation after getting elected as the President. Jai Shri Ram.”
Not only this, but the fake account handler is also cautioning people to stay away from the fake accounts of Draupadi Murmu.
None of these fake accounts is verified and people are misguided by these accounts, so much so that the posts from the fake accounts are gaining multiple retweets and some of the fake accounts have thousands of followers.
It is notable that Draupadi Murmu is actually not present on Twitter, she does not have any account on the micro blogging site.
