NEW DELHI: MoS External Affairs and self-described humanitarian Mr Shashi Tharoor has vehemently denied rumours that the party high command has asked him to vacate his twitter account with immediate effect. To prove the point, Mr Tharoor began tweeting within hours of leaving 10 Janpath.
 

But India’s top tweeters are far from impressed. Said a powertweeter who wished to remain anonymous: “I’ve been monitoring @ohshitharoor’s tweets since yesterday morning and I can say without hesitation that something is certainly amiss here.” The tweeter refused to elaborate since he had already reached his 140 character limit.
 
Mr Tharoor’s trip to Liberia, it is rumored, suffered from a similar mania for terseness. Ministry officials have complained that most of their time was taken up in paring down gigantic business contracts to crisp, 140-character capsules. “Thank God for bit.ly or we’d have been totally sunk” said a contractor contracted to contract contracts.

Mischievous tweeters had a field day, baiting Mr Tharoor with questions like “so are you going to bomb the Chinkies this time?” etc. Sources tell us that Mr Tharoor was fairly bubbling with jests and had to be manually restrained from responding.

Rubbishing reports that he’d been given a severe dressing down at 10 Janpath, Mr Tharoor said that it was merely a courtesy call, at the end of which he’d even exchanged gifts with the Gandhis. When asked what gift he had received, he said, “Nothing much, just Rs. 500 and a transistor radio.”