New Delhi, May 11 (IANS): Hitting a new milestone amid the hotly fought Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now has over 11 million followers on Twitter - more than double the number its arch-rival Congress Party has on the social media platform.

The BJP (@BJP4India) joined the platform in October 2010. The Congress (@INCIndia) which joined Twitter in February 2013 has just about 5.14 million followers on the platform.

"This is a great milestone for all of us. Thank you," BJP's IT cell head Amit Malviya said on Twitter after announcing the milestone on Saturday.

The news comes just a few days after a study found that Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the second most-followed politician in the world with a social media audience of 110,912,648 million on platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The most-followed politician globally is former US President Barack Obama, who has 182,710,777 followers on his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, said a study by online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform SEMrush.

On Twitter alone, Modi has 47.2 million followers, compared to 9.4 million of Congress President Rahul Gandhi who joined Twitter six years later than the BJP leader.