Twitter Appoints Vinay Prakash As Resident Grievance Officer For India As Per New IT Rules

In the latest development, the US-headquartered micro-blogging platform Twitter has appointed Vinay Prakash as its Resident Grievance Officer for India.

As per the information updated on Twitter's website, Vinay Prakash is the Resident Grievance Officer (RGO). "Twitter can be contacted in India at the following address: 4th Floor, The Estate, 121 Dickenson Road, Bangalore 560 042," stated the website.

Additionally, the company has also published its compliance report for the period of 26 May 2021 to 25 June 2021, which was another key requirement under the IT rules.

The development comes at a time when the micro-blogging platform is already under pressure to comply with the new norms and has faced severe criticism from the government along with warnings of legal proceedings.

Last month, Twitter had appointed Dharmendra Chatur as the interim resident grievance officer for India, however, he had stepped down only days after his appointment.

Twitter has been at loggerheads with the central government over non-compliance of new social media rules.

The centre last week told the Delhi High Court that the intermediaries were provided three months to comply with the rules from 26th February onward and that it has been 41 days of non-compliance by Twitter.

The court had subsequently asked Twitter on how long it will take to appoint a new grievance officer and even gave a go-ahead to the central government to take action against the company as it wouldn’t be provided with protection.

With respect to the chief grievance officer, Twitter mentioned that it appointed a person on that post. However, that individual resigned and hence they are in the pursuit of finding another one currently.

Notably, the company has already lost the ‘immunity’ granted to it under Section 79(1) of the IT Act, 2000 for having failed to follow the amended IT rules.