Centre accepts sending 'face consequence' notice to Twitter for not blocking URLs amid farmers' agitation
Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar also denied requesting for users' data from any social media accounts.
The Centre on Friday accepted serving Twitter a notice with a ‘significant consequences’ warning after it failed to take down 167 of 3,750 URLs it had asked to block during the period of farmers' agitation between 2020 and 2021. It, however, denied having threatened to carry out authorised raids or shut down Twitter's office during the protest.
The government said the direction to block those URLs was made following the Information Technology Act.
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“The government issued notice to Twitter on June 27, 2022, giving them opportunity to comply fully, failing which they would have had to face significant consequences as mention in the IT Act, 2000. Subsequent to this notice, Twitter complied with all the blocking direction issued under Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000,” Union minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Parliament in a response to a question in Rajya Sabha.
The Union minister also denied requesting for users' data from any social media accounts.
Also read: 'No choice but to…': Elon Musk on Dorsey's claim that India threatened Twitter shutdown
Twitter former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey whipped a controversy alleging Indian government of directing to remove posts and accounts from the social media platforms that “manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’, ‘raid the homes of your employees’.” Notably, Delhi Police in May, 2021, carried out raids at Twitter's Delhi and Gurugram offices.
