Centre hits out at Twitter, says it is attempting to dictate terms to world’s largest democracy

New Delhi: Hours after Twitter issued statement alleging threat to freedom of expression and intimidation tactics by Delhi Police, the Centre has hit out at the microblogging website and asked it to ‘stop beating around the bush’ and comply with the laws of the land.

“Twitter needs to stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land. Law making and policy formulations is the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform and it has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be,” said government in a statement.

MeitY trashes Twitter’s claims

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, in a searing statement lashed out at Twitter for trying to dictate terms to India’s largest democracy.

Twitter on Thursday said it was very concerned with the “recent events” regarding its employees in the country and “the potential threat to freedom of expression” for its users.

Highlights of Govt’s statement:

# Twitter refuses to comply with those very regulations in the Intermediary Guidelines on the basis of which it is claiming a safe harbour protection from any criminal liability in India.

# India has a glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices dating back centuries. Protecting free speech in India is not the prerogative of only a private, for-profit, foreign entity like Twitter.

# The only instance of scuttling free speech on Twitter is Twitter itself and its opaque policies, as a result of which people’s accounts are suspended and tweets deleted arbitrarily without recourse.

# Law making and policy formulations is the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform and it has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be.

# Twitter has claimed that it is committed to the people of India. Ironically, this commitment of Twitter has been most invisible in recent times. Examples given in Press Release.

# The Government also wishes to emphatically assure that representatives of social media companies including Twitter are and will always remain safe in India and there is no threat to their personal safety and security.

# Government condemns the unfortunate statement issued by Twitter as totally baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their own follies.

Twitter’s statement aimed derailing inquiry, says Police

Delhi Police also slammed the social media giant for its allegation against the force. Delhi Police said that Twitter accusing it of using “intimidation tactics” in the toolkit case was “not only mendacious but designed to impede a lawful inquiry”.

The Police also accused the microblogging was seeking “dubious sympathy” while refusing to share information it is privy to.

.@DelhiPolice responds to @Twitter‘s statement issued earlier in the day. pic.twitter.com/V8lA07IvDF

— Hemani Bhandari (@HemaniBhandari) May 27, 2021

“Twitter’s “entire conduct” in the last few days has been “obfuscatory, diversionary and tendentious” though it “refuses to do a simple thing”, which is to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies and reveal to the legal authority the information it has, a Delhi Police statement said.