MP Home Minister Urges Twitter To Devise Mechanism To Filter Out Provocative, Objectionable Content Beforehand

Bhopal, Jul 8 (PTI) Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra on Friday urged Twitter to devise a mechanism to examine and filter out potentially provocative and objectionable content written by its users, and said this kind of system would be in the interest of the country.

Twitter had recently pulled down filmmaker Leena Manimekalai's tweet about her documentary 'Kaali', which is currently at the centre of a controversy. In the said tweet posted on July 2, the Toronto-based director had shared the poster of 'Kaali', which depicted the titular goddess smoking and holding an LGBTQ flag.

In his letter to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Mishra said, 'As it is known to everyone that Twitter has become one of the most important and trusted sources of spreading news and other content all around the globe, few people are also trying to gain cheap publicity using this platform.'

'They use Twitter so that they can get instant recognition from the people. It has been observed over the last few months that these people have started putting out more religious matter on the platform in such a way that it not only affects harmony among the religions, but also disturbs the law and order situation,' he said.

Referring to the recent posts, Mishra pointed out that they have started targeting some specific religious groups.

'Considering all this, I request you to please make such a process in which the content that is going to be posted first gets examined by Twitter itself and if it found it to be objectionable or provocative, then immediately it should stop its publication,' the minister said.

He also demanded blocking of the Twitter accounts of those users, who try to post objectionable and provocative posts repeatedly with the aim of disturbing the country's harmony and peace.

Madhya Pradesh police on Thursday sent a legal notice to Twitter, asking it to remove access to the 'objectionable' content posted by filmmaker Manimekalai regarding her documentary 'Kaali'.

The access should be removed within 36 hours, police said, a day after registering two FIRs against the film-maker for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.

The notice said the content was unlawful' as per section 295-A of the IPC (hurting religious feelings), under which First Information Reports (FIRs) were registered against Manimekalai in Bhopal and Ratlam on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, an FIR was registered in Indore on Friday against Manimekalai at Annapurna police station on the complaint of Bajrang Dal's local coordinator Lakshminarayan Tannu Sharma, a police official said.

Mishra had earlier said that the BJP government in the state has also written to the Centre to issue a lookout circular against Manimekalai.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without any modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)