Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday urged his followers on X to drop “Modi ka Parivar,” or Modi’s family, from their names on social media.

“With the message of all of us being one family having been effectively conveyed, I would once again thank the people of India and request that you now remove ‘Modi Ka Parivar’ from your social media,” Modi said in a social media post.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, several Bharatiya Janata Party leaders appended the words “Modi Ka Parivar” in parentheses to their display names on social media.

Advertisement

Some prominent party leaders who had added the words to their X account names are Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath.

This came a day after Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, on March 3, remarked at a public rally in Patna that the prime minister “has no family”.

Responding to Yadav’s comments, Modi said during a speech in Telangana that the “entire country is my family”, ANI reported. The prime minister said he considers 140 crore Indians as his family.

Advertisement

On Tuesday, Modi said that people have given the National Democratic Alliance “a majority for the third consecutive time, a record of sorts, and have given us the mandate to keep working for the betterment of our nation”.

While requesting his followers to remove the parenthetical from their display names on social media, Modi said: “Our bond as one parivar [family] striving for India’s progress remains strong and unbroken.”

Just before the general election in 2019, BJP leaders had launched a similar campaign by adding the prefix “chowkidar”, or a watchman, to their names on X, which was called Twitter at the time.

Modi had repeatedly referred to himself as India’s chowkidar, a declaration that had prompted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to taunt Modi with “chowkidar chor hai”, or the watchman is the thief jibe, particularly while alleging corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal.