Lawyer moves Delhi HC for directions to Twitter to comply with new IT rules

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 28

A lawyer has moved the Delhi High Court seeking directions to Twitter to comply with the Centre’s IT rules that require social media platforms to appoint resident grievance officers, besides providing access to encrypted messages to law enforcement agencies in certain cases.

Filed by advocate Amit Acharya, the PIL comes three days after the expiry of the three-month period given to the companies to comply with the rules, non-compliance of which could effectively deprive the social media companies—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and others – of the legal protections for user generated content on their platforms, making them potentially liable for criminal action, in case of complaints.

The new rules also require them to take down any content flagged by the authorities in 36 hours, and to set up a mechanism to respond to complaints.

Social media platforms are widely used by politicians, professionals and common people alike in India which has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram subscribers, while 1.75 crore account holders of microblogging platform Twitter.

The Information Technology Rules came into effect from February 25 and the Centre had given three months to every social media intermediary, including Twitter, to comply with them.

Despite the expiry of the said three-month period till date no resident grievance officer has been appointed by Twitter to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform, Acharya pointed out.

Acharya said he came to know about the alleged non-compliance when he tried to lodge a complaint against a couple of tweets.

Besides seeking a direction to Twitter to appoint a resident grievance officer without further delay, he urged the court to direct the Centre to ensure that the IT rules are complied with.

Twitter maintained it was committed to India as a vital market, but criticised the new IT rules and regulations that it said “inhibit free, open public conversation”.

The Centre had said Twitter was levelling baseless and false allegations to defame India and dictating terms to the world’s largest democracy and that the social networking platform has refused to comply with new digital rules requiring identification of the originator of a flagged message and appointing grievance redressal officers and the purported commitment of the US-based firm to India not only sounds hollow but completely self-serving.