Indian ministers, lawmakers, officials and their staunch supporters are moving to the home-made, largely-obscured Koo app in droves to counter Twitter after the American social media giant fell foul of the authorities by refusing to delete over 1,100 farm protests-related handles labelled as "inflammatory" by the Narendra Modi-led central government.

The country's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday took to Twitter to announce he was switching to Koo, teasing his followers to connect with him on an "Indian microblogging website for real-time, exciting and exclusive updates." This was followed by a barrage of endorsements by his colleagues in the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party.

According to local media reports, the app, which was launched in December, has been downloaded over 3 million times, recording a ten-fold jump. Twitter has more than 15 million users in India.

Ethical hacker: Koo is leaking users' personal data

Robert Baptiste, a French ethical hacker popularly known as Elliot Alderson on Twitter, accused Koo of leaking its users' personal data.

Twitter-India faceoff

On Tuesday, Twitter justified its run-in with the government saying that it believed the order contravened with Indian laws. 

"In keeping with our principles of defending protected and freedom of expression, we have not taken any action on accounts that consist of news media entities, journalists, activists, and politicians," it said.

India's IT ministry described the social media platform's defense as "unusual" in the "light of Twitter seeking a meeting with the Govt."

The U.S. State Department on Thursday reacted to the rift by reaffirming its commitment to "supporting democratic values and promoting human rights, including freedom of expression online and offline."