When Anandiben Patel took over as Gujarat Chief Minister on a sunny afternoon in May 2014, in place of the high-profile Narendra Modi, few would have thought that the first woman to head the State would also be India’s first to announce her resignation on social media, a skill she may have acquired from her mentor and predecessor.
A tech-savvy Modi was among the first to Indian politicians to effectively use the social media to air his views on various issues. A science teacher-turned-politician, Anandiben took a leaf out of Modi’s book and first announced her resignation on Twitter and Facebook.
As CM, it did not take Anandiben long to understand the political and social significance of the online media, and also the apparent, yet ‘secret’, benefits of the same. She learned the ropes of social media much faster than expected and used it to surprise her ‘followers’ on Monday!
Anandiben would use her Twitter handle a couple of times a day. But she was unusually active in the days leading up to her resignation.
In her second tweet on Monday, the Chief Minister declared her intention to quit. Ditto on her Facebook page, which has over 3.8 lakh ‘likes’.
The open resignation letter posted on social media platforms earned Patel the unique distinction of being the first Chief Minister in the country to do so.
Unlike Prime Minister Modi, who saw his followers on Twitter jump multi-fold from nearly 4 million in May 2014 to over 21 million now, Anandiben maintains a modest ‘fan-following’ of over 4.41 lakh as on August 3, 2016 on her official handle @anandibenpatel.
The seven days ending August 1, when Patel made her intent to resign public, her Twitter handle kept buzzing more frequently than before. In a span of seven days — between July 25 and August 1 — she tweeted at a daily average of six tweets. In the last three days, between July 29 and 31, Patel’s tweets further intensified, with there being an average of 8-9 tweets a day.
However, after hanging up her boots on August 1, Patel seems to have hung up her handle, which did not have any tweet since her last words as CM — “relieve me”.