New Delhi, Oct. 22: Think not, Indians. Your Prime Minister has just made life simpler for you this Diwali.

Narendra Modi’s social media team, a key propeller during his general election campaign earlier this year, has come up with a tool to keep up his connect with the masses: an inexhaustible repertoire of his quotes.

Now, all that the sociable millions who have been racking their brains on what to write as part of Diwali e-greetings have to do is tag a quote and click.

There’s a catch, though: the quote is the key — no quote, no greeting.

On Tuesday evening, special pages were created on the sites www.narendramodi.in/egreetings and www.india.gov.in for prospective users, who would need to log in to send the greetings.

No Indian politician has tried such a move so far and sources in the social media team in the Prime Minister’s Office said the idea was to “use the occasion” to propagate Modi’s messages.

None of the quotes is related to Diwali, but government officials insisted Netizens had responded with enthusiasm.

“Within hours of starting the pages, we got thousands of hits and people are using the platform to send Diwali greetings to send out personalised messages to their loved ones, along with his quotes. We are very happy with the response,” said an official in the team.

All that people have to do is follow “four easy steps” to send the e-card.

Government employees need to log in to the website www.india.gov.in, enter their official mail ID and password and send the e-card.

For those who are not government employees, they must be registered users of mygov.nic.in or india.gov.in. The third option is to go to www.narendramodi.in/egreetings and send the card.

After they log in, senders are required to select a card image. After they have written their personal greetings, they can choose a message from a list of government-approved greetings.

Next, they will be asked to select a quote from around 150 options. These are messages delivered by the Prime Minister on various occasions, including Independence Day, the BRICS summit, launch of the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission, his visit to Japan and his maiden radio address to the nation on Vijaya Dashami.

Many of the quotes are from Modi’s campaign trail ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, lambasting the then UPA government. Some endorse the Gujarat model of development when he was still the state’s chief minister.

Akhila Sivadas, executive director, Centre for Advocacy and Research, said Modi was using every occasion to engage in “person-to-person” communication. “It is obvious; he is trying to break away from the formalism of the office and does not do all this in his official capacity but as a fellow citizen.”

During his campaign days, Modi, she added, used to give voice to people’s frustration and anger. “Now he wants to keep that connection going.”

Not everyone was impressed.

“I can’t fathom why people would want to send out festive greetings with such unrelated quotes as listed on the websites. I think this is only a brand-promotion exercise more than anything else,” said Usha Khera, a software engineer based in Gurgaon.

There’s another way of looking at it, with due respect to the Prime Minister — a “Modified” Diwali.