Published Jun 12, 2026 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 12, 2026 | 8:00 AM
Pinarayi Vijayan and VD Satheesan
The Chief Minister’s Office in the Kerala capital, Thiruvananthapuram, is now a beehive of activities ahead of the state Budget presentation on 19 June.
Chief Minister VD Satheesan is not leaving any stone unturned in preparing the Budget, his first after assuming charge of the state. Sources said he is studying as if he were preparing for a public examination.
Amid these activities, officials, especially those in the chief minister’s media team, are engaged in a search-and-find operation for a missing X handle.
The handle in question is the official CMO Kerala. Along with the officials, Meta, too, is searching for the page.
The page, which once boasted of having millions of followers, just vanished into the blue. According to the media wing in the CMO, the disappearance is not a technical error.
Currently, Satheesan has nearly 55,000 followers on X and around 8.94 lakh followers on Facebook.
According to Roy Mathew, media secretary to the chief minister, there is hope that the page can be retrieved this week.
But the backstory of the missing page has many intriguing twists.
When Pinarayi Vijayan was chief minister, the CMO Kerala X account was very active and had a professional touch.
One of the major criticisms Vijayan faced before and during elections was the alleged excess of PR work. Even election campaigns featuring mostly his image on posters and flex boards attracted criticism.
According to sources close to Vijayan, there was a dedicated PR team apart from the Public Relations Department, consisting of professionals hired specifically for this purpose.
Vijayan and his government later faced significant political controversies regarding the alleged use of external PR agencies.
Now, people close to the current chief minister ask a simple question: Everyone says the government is a continuation. Then how can a former chief minister’s team take away an official CMO page?
Those who closely followed the CMO can probably fill in the blanks.
A major political storm had erupted when Vijayan’s interview in The Hindu featured controversial remarks linking economic offences and hawala activities to Malappuram district.
The newspaper later clarified that the controversial portions were inserted at the request of Kaizzen, the PR agency that facilitated the interview.
Vijayan strongly rejected any ties to the PR firm, maintaining that the Information and Public Relations Department handled all government media relations and that no external agency had ever been contracted.
But when South First asked about the missing page, the PRD initially cited technical issues and delays in uploading photographs after the new chief minister took office. Now, there is no response from their side, making the story even more intriguing and interesting.
Apparently, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the PRD may not know much about this “professional handling.”
What people close to Satheesan suspect is that the private agency’s contract may have expired, and the page they nurtured, managed and helped grow to millions of followers may have disappeared along with it.
Nobody knows for sure. Or perhaps everybody knows, but nobody wants to say it loudly.
Whether it was the PRD or a private agency, one thing is certain: The money spent on all these social media exercises, image-building campaigns, and follower-hunting adventures was public money. Sometimes leaders and political parties conveniently forget that small detail.
Anyway, while one team inside the CMO is busy searching for numbers for the Budget, another team is busy searching for a missing X account.
As of now, there is hope that the X account will be found before 19 June.
