Rajeev Chandrasekhar Hits Back At Jack Dorsey's Claim Of India Threatening To Shut Down Twitter: 'Outright Lie'

Union Minister for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar hit out at former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for the latter's claims that the Indian government asked Twitter to take down accounts related to farmers' protest and censor accounts of journalists critical of India government. Dorsey had claimed in an interview that the Indian government had warned Twitter with raids and that Twitter would be shut down in India if it didn't comply by government's "requests."

"This is an outright lie by @jack - perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history," said the Union Minister in his tweet.

"Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA. To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws," said Chandrasekhar in his clarification.

Jack Dorsey's comments kick-up a controversy

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey kicked up a controversy after he said in his latest interview that the Indian government put pressure on Twitter and even threatened with raids on offices and homes of employees if the company did not take down farmers' protest handles at the time of farmers' protest in India in 2020-21.

Farmers' protest and roll-back of the laws

The stand-off between protesting farmers and government over the three farm laws resulted in a long agitation by the farmers. After months of protest, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2021 announced a roll-back of the three farm laws saying that despite its best efforts, the government could not convince the farmers on the farm laws.