New Delhi, Aug 23 (IANS): As the Internet celebrates the 12th birthday of the hashtag on Friday, Twitter unveiled the top hashtags that dominated conversations on the platform in the first half of 2019 in India.

With Tamil action drama film #Viswasam grabbing the top spot, the trend reflected the rise of regional entertainment on Twitter.

This was followed by conversations around politics and governance. Throughout the campaign period for the #LokSabhaElections2019, politicians and political parties used Twitter to communicate with people in the country and across the world, while citizens took to the platform to address their queries directly to contesting leaders.

As cricket fans from all over the world came to Twitter to talk about winning moments, shocking upsets, classic catches, and unique to this World Cup - the memes about the rain -- #CWC19 became the top third hashtag this year.

Entertainment continued making trends, with the Indian Telugu-language action drama film #Maharshi grabbing the fourth spot.

With many users tweeting about updating their profile pictures, the fifth most commonly tweeted hashtag of the year was #NewProfilePic, Twitter said.

Additionally, Twitter launched an emoji to celebrate the symbol that connects communities and unifies conversations. The specially designed emoji is a hashtag symbol stamped on a heart.

The hashtag (#) was born on Twitter 12 years ago. It can help categorise tweets and allow users to access all the conversations on a particular theme.