New Delhi: Twitter has not complied with the Centre's IT Rules to appoint a resident grievance officer, a PIL alleged in the Delhi High Court on Friday and sought directions to the social media platform to comply without any delay.
The plea, by a lawyer, stated that the Information Technology Rules came into effect on February 25 and the Centre had given three months to every social media intermediary, including Twitter, to comply with them.
Amit Acharya, the petitioner, contended that the three-month period got over on May 25, but till date no resident grievance officer has been appointed by Twitter to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform.
In his plea, filed through advocate Akash Vajpai and Manish Kumar, Acharya said that he came to know about the alleged non-compliance when he tried to lodge a complaint against a couple of tweets.
According to Bar and Bench, a litigation news portal, the two objectionable tweets were by Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra and journalist Swati Chaturvedi, who are verified users on the platform.
On May 25, Moitra had tweeted: "Welcome to our Susu Potty Republic! Drink Gaumutra, smear cow dung & flush the rule of law down the toilet. Delhi Police issue notice to Twitter & land up in their offices for rightly calling out BJP’s fake document as manipulated media. Go figure."
The tweet posted by Chaturvedi on May 26 said: "If Bobde had been Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Modi would have been able to appoint his favourite Gujarat IPS official Rakesh Asthana. What a huge difference a CJI who follows the law makes."
With an intent to file a complaint against the tweets, the petitioner tried to look for the Resident Grievance Officer but found no details of the same on Twitter's website. Moreover, the petitioner found that Twitter has appointed a US resident named Jeremy Kessel as Grievance Officer, which could not be considered as implementation of the IT Rules in its true spirit, the portal states.
Twitter had recently said it was committed to India as a key market but criticised the new IT rules and regulations that it said, "inhibit free, open public conversation". Responding to Twitter’s comments, the Centre had said the messaging platform was levelling baseless and false allegations to defame India and dictating terms to the world's largest democracy.
