New foreign minister Jaishankar takes to Twitter, pledges to follow Sushma

New External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who has been Twitter shy so far, pledged on Saturday to follow the footsteps of his predecessor Sushma Swaraj.

"My first tweet. Thank you all for the best wishes. Honoured to be given this responsibility. Proud to follow on the footsteps of Sushma Swaraj ji," Jaishankar tweeted.

In another missive in the social networking site, he wrote: "We at Team MEA India continue to be at your service 24x7. Happy to be leading the effort with my colleague MoS Muraleedharan ji".

Jaishankar's Twitter profile shows he had joined the micro blogging site way back in May 2017, but surprisingly his first missive came only on Saturday - a day after he took charge as the country's new External Affairs Minister.

A former Foreign Secretary and an able hand in Indo-US relations, Jaishankar was a 'surprise pack' in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new team of council of ministers.

Jaishankar replaced senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who did not contest Lok Sabha elections this year, owing to her ill health.

In December 2016, Sushma Swaraj was listed among 100 leading  global thinkers for the year by a leading international magazine for 'fashioning a novel brand of Twitter diplomacy'. The honour came from reputed periodical 'Foreign Policy'.

In June 26, 2017, Prime Minister Modi had lauded Swaraj for giving 'human face' to diplomacy and had said that the latter's effective use of social networking can be linked to 'good governance'.