New Delhi, Mar 7 (IANS): The Congress on Monday alleged that the Twitter follower count of Rahul Gandhi was "guided by external influence" due to which it was not increasing earlier, but now it has reached 20 million.

Congress tweeted, "The twitter followers of Shri @RahulGandhi has touched the 20M mark.His letter to Twitter CEO and then the rise in number of followers proves that freeze on his followers count was guided by an external influence on Twitter."

The party has put a hashtag that Twitter is "exposed" and the number had reached 20 million a week ago, said Congress sources.

Rohan Gupta, the Congress social media head said, "This is because Rahulji wrote to Twitter. But other Congress handles are still facing similar hassles and the number is static. We hope that Twitter will not work under pressure from the government."

Rahul Gandhi on December 27, 2021 had flagged the issue and had written to Twitter CEO that he had an average addition of about 4 lakh followers for the first seven months of 2021, the growth came to an abrupt halt for several months after suspension in August last year.

In the letter, Rahul wrote, "I raised the plight of a rape victim's family in Delhi, stood in solidarity with farmers and fought the government on many other human rights issues. In fact, a video of mine that promised farmers that the 3 infamous farm laws will be repealed is among the most watched videos on Twitter posted by any political leader in India in recent times."

The Twitter spokesperson had, however, refuted the accusation, and had said that "in routine they remove millions of accounts each week for violating our policies on platform manipulation and spam".