Srijan Pal Singh, an associate of former President APJ Abdul Kalam, has deactivated all social media accounts of India's 11th president, following a terse statement by Kalam's office.
The statement issued on Wednesday said Singh "does not hold the authority to handle them (the accounts)."
"As per advise of former staff members, have deactivated the memorial social media accounts of Dr. Kalam sir," Singh posted on Facebook.
"Please note fb will take 14 days beginning yesterday to deactivate. It is a technical policy of account deletion under fb," he wrote further.
Kalam's office had said that Singh, who was "privately associated with Dr Kalam in his academic pursuits, is giving statements in the media and also in the social media like Facebook, Twitter, Web etc.", was "not authorised to interact with the media on or about Dr APJ Abdul Kalam."
A controversy erupted after Singh posted his tribute to the late president, titled "Last Eight Hours with Kalam", referring to the hours preceding the death of Kalam due to a heart attack while delivering a lecture at IIM, Shillong, on 27 July.
Singh was a student of Kalam and has co-authored two books with him. He had accompanied Kalam to IIM Shillong for the lecture.
"The office is not against Singh sharing his experience as a student with Kalam. He has every right to do that. At the same time, he has no right to share things through Kalam's official pages in social networking sites. There is an office to take care of it," V Ponraj, who was scientific adviser to Kalam for two decades, told The Times of India.
