PM Manmohan Singh is on Facebook

[ashwin]

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on social networking site Facebook but is not net savvy and even does not use a cell phone.


In the course of a discussion on a pvt TV channel, Singh's former media advisor Sanjay Baru said though the Prime Minister is not net savvy, there is a Facebook site which is regularly updated, so he is on Facebook.

But he had no idea as to who was updating the site. Minister of State for external affairs Shashi Tharoor, who has been extensively using the site Twitter, said the Prime Minister had once asked him what the site was about and how it worked.

"I told him at that point - look which politician is going to resist an audience, in those days 24,000 or something," he said.

"He (Prime Minister) laughed and said of course you should not and today I have an audience of 84,000 and tomorrow it might be more....no politician would wisely turn down an audience of so many that he could reach," Tharoor said.

The minister said his remarks on the site are a combination of personal and official comments. "But in none of my 1000 tweets have I said anything which I could not have said publicly or that in anyway embarrasses or compromises the government".