IT Ministry Slams Twitter Over Non-Compliance With Indian Laws, Arbitrary Account Suspensions: Here Are The Highlights

The Ministry of Electronics and IT on Thursday (27 May) released a strongly worded response to Twitter over the latter's allegation of freedom of expression coming under threat in India.

Twitter has also been dragging its feet over implementing the new IT rules as it faces heat over unilaterally declaring Congress' alleged Toolkit as Manipulated Media.

Here are the top points from the IT's Ministry's rebuttal to Twitter:

• Protecting free speech in India is not the prerogative of only a private, for-profit foreign entity like Twitter but it is the commitment of the world's largest democracy and its robust institutions.

• Through its actions and deliberate defiance, Twitter seeks to undermine India's legal system and refuse to comply with those very regulations under which it is claiming protection from any criminal liability in India.

• If Twitter is so committed to Freedom of Speech then why does it not set up such a mechanism in India of its own. The purported commitment of Twitter thus not only sounds hollow but also completely self-serving.

• The only instance of scuttling free speech on Twitter is Twitter itself and its opaque policies, as a result of which people's accounts are suspended and tweets deleted arbitrarily without recourse.

• Twitter needs to stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land. Twitter is just a social media platform and has no locus in dictating what should India's legal framework be.

• Twitter has claimed that it is committed to the people of India which has been most invisible in recent times. For example it showed parts of Ladakh as Chinese territory and rectified it only after repeated reminders. Twitter refused to take prompt action to block content which spread a fake genocide plan in the aftermath of the 26 January Red Fort violence. Twitter took no action against fake narratives like labelling B.1.617 Coronavirus mutant as Indian variant despite strict WHO guidelines.

• It is high time that Twitter disabuses itself of this grandiosity and comply with the laws of India.