SOCIAL MEDIA STARS: Two people whose reach goes beyond Kerala and its politics — MP and BJP’s surprise candidate for the Assembly constituency former cricketer S Sreesanth — lead the Twitter charts in the state. and BJP state president K Rajasekaran are also active, often tweeting in Malayalam. Due to long-standing alliances in the state, the United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress has a handle of its own, in addition to independent handles of the parties. Neither the nor its leaders seem to have figured out Twitter. In the last of a four-part series on social media stars in the poll-bound states of Tamil Nadu, West , Assam and Kerala, N Sundaresha Subramanian looks at the Twitter scene in God’s Own Country

OOMMEN CHANDY Chief Minister, Kerala (Congress) Twitter Handle: @Oommen_Chandy Tweets No. of followers 6,129 51.4K SHASHI THAROOR Congress MP, Thiruvananthapuram Twitter Handle: @ShashiTharoor S SREESANTH Tweets No. of followers BJP candidate, Thiruvananthapuram 30.8K 4.09M Twitter Handle: @sreesanth36 Tweets No. of followers 6,268 1.04M PARTY HANDLES

UDF KERALA V MURALEEDHARAN Twitter Handle: @udfkerala BJP veteran Tweets No. of followers Twitter Handle: @MuraliBJP 103 4,602 Tweets No. of followers 625 4,415 CPI(M) KERALAM Twitter Handle: @CPIM_Keralam KUMMANAM RAJASEKHARAN Tweets No. of followers 4,127 State president, BJP 958 Twitter Handle: @Kummanam Tweets No. of followers BJP KERALAM 1,324 10.8K Twitter Handle: @BJP4Keralam Tweets No. of followers RAMESH 3,993 4,906 CHENNITHALA Home Minister , Kerala (Congress) Twitter Handle: @chennithala Tweets No. of followers Twitter Handle: @INC_Kerala 662 3,153 Tweets No. of followers 239 193 VIJAYAN Member, Politbureau of Communist Party of (Marxist) MUSLIM LEAGUE (IUML) Twitter Handle: @vijayanpinarayi Twitter Handle: @iuml4thepeople Tweets No. of followers Tweets No. of followers 493 4,839 794 3,962

Data as of April 15 Source: Twitter