Two representatives of Twitter India appeared before a parliamentary standing committee on Friday evening to answer questions concerning ways to prevent misuse of the social media platform.
The parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, heard their views on the subject.
The Twitter officials have been summoned at a time when the microblogging site has clashed with the government over the new IT rules. The site has also been charged by the UP Police with inciting communal hate over posts on an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad.
Government sources said "has lost the legal shield" as it failed to comply with the new IT rules. Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Twitter was given "multiple opportunities to comply" but it chose the path of "deliberate defiance".
Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari has been asked to appear at the Loni Border police station in Ghaziabad within seven days to get his statement recorded in the case in which an FIR was lodged against the social media giant also.
Last month, Manish Maheshwari was questioned by Delhi Police last in a case involving an alleged "Congress toolkit", sources said.
Twitter and the Centre are at loggerheads on several issues for the last few months. Twitter had faced backlash, when it had briefly removed the blue tick verification badge from the personal account of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and of several senior RSS functionaries, including its chief Mohan Bhagwat.