70.81% Indians support crackdown on Twitter for its non-compliance with laws

New Delhi: A poll conducted by IANS CVoter Live Tracker has revealed that a huge majority of 70.81 per cent respondents said that India should crack down on Twitter for not complying with the laws of the country.

Whereas 18.65 per cent of respondents voted that there should not be a crackdown.

The tussle between the Centre and Twitter over the new IT rules has been on for months now. Twitter's failure to comply with them has resulted in it losing the status of being an intermediary and legal protections associated with under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.

With the legal protection gone, Twitter is now facing charges in several states. The prominent among these are the charges against Twitter India's Managing Director Manish Maheshwari.

Among several other cases, the Uttar Pradesh Police has booked Manish Maheshwari in connection with Twitter portraying an incorrect map of India on its website.

Manish has been booked under Section 505(2) (statement conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 74 of the IT Act.

Meanwhile, the newly-appointed Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has not wasted any time to make it crystal clear how he wants things to pan out in the ongoing Twitter-Centre face off after he assumed office as the Union Minister for Railways, Communication, Electronics & IT on Thursday.

"Everyone has to follow the law of the country," Vaishnaw said during his first visit to the party headquarters after being made a Cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi-led government.

When questioned about Twitter not complying with the new IT Rules, the minister hinted that everyone has to follow the new guidelines.

The tacker had a sample size of 1,314.

The CVoter NewsTracker Surveys in India are based on a national representative random probability sample as used in the globally standardized RDD CATI methodology, covering all geographic and demographic segments across all states.

This daily live tracker survey is based on interviews of adult (18+) respondents across all socio-economic segments. The data is weighted to the known Census profile. The standard margin of error is +/- 3 per cent at national trends and +/- 5 per cent at regional/zonal trends with 95 per cent confidence level.