New Delhi: Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer for India has stepped down, leaving the micro-blogging site without a grievance official as mandated by the new IT rules to address complaints from Indian subscribers, according to a source.
On Friday, the social media giant had locked official Twitter account of Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology over a tweet posted by him three and a half years ago. A spokesperson for Twitter said the action followed after microblogging platform received a notice of violation of US copyright law by the Minister’s account.
The IT Minister had hit out at Twitter strongly and accused it of violating India’s IT laws.
The social media company’s website no longer displays his name, as required under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. Twitter now displays the company’s name in the place of grievance officer for India with a US address and an email ID.
However, Twitter declined to comment on the development.
The development comes at a time when the micro-blogging platform has been engaged in a tussle with the Indian government over the new social media rules.
The government has slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country’s new IT rules.
The new rules which came into effect from May 25 mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims.
All significant social media companies, with over 50 lakh user base shall appoint a grievance officer to deal with such complaints and share the name and contact details of such officers.
The big social media companies are mandated to appoint a chief compliance officer, a Nodal Contact Person and a resident grievance officer.
All of them should be resident in India.
