The curious case of Jay Amitbhai Shah’s Twitter account: Blue tick without ever tweeting, over 10,000 followers in 24 hours

On October 14, Jay Amitbhai Shah, son of Home Minister Amit Shah, was appointed secretary of the country’s richest sports body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India. In 2017, Shah junior landed in a controversy after his company, Temple Enterprises, was found to have almost miraculously grown by 16,000 times in 2015-16. 

Two years on, Jay Shah is garnering attention for another miracle, only this time it’s in the virtual world. 

A week ago, Twitter restricted some Dalit and OBC thinkers and intellectuals from using the platform, citing violations of its community standards. They included journalist Dilip Mandal – whose account has since been restored – Ratan Lal, a professor at Delhi’s Hindu College, and Hansraj Meena, founder of the Tribal Army. The decision led to accusations of casteism against the tech giant, with hashtags such as #CasteistTwitter and #BramhanicalTwitter trending. Users also accused Twitter of deliberately not verifying the handles of persons from Dalit, Adivasi, OBC and other minority communities, in contrast to people from the upper castes. They questioned why people from marginalised groups with lakhs of followers were not verified while upper caste people with barely any followers managed to get blue ticks.

Some of the users pointed to the curious case of Jay Shah’s account. From the day he was appointed BCCI secretary until November 4, he had a mere 27 followers, and he hadn’t tweeted even once. And from the evening of November 4 to the morning of November 6, the number of his Twitter followers shot up from 27 to 10,000, a growth of around 37,000 per cent. Moreover, Shah junior’s Twitter handle has carried the blue tick since the day it was set up. 

How could this have happened? Read our story on Newslaundry Hindi.