Twitter appoints interim grievance redressal officer in compliance with IT Rules

New Delhi: Micro-blogging platform Twitter has announced that it has appointed an interim grievance redressal officer for its India operations as per the requirements under the new IT guidelines.

Twitter has listed Dharmendra Chatur, who is reported to be a partner designate at a law firm representing Twitter at the Delhi high court, as an interim grievance redressal officer on its website. A spokesperson from Twitter declined to comment on the issue.

The government had earlier rejected the appointment of outsiders into statutory posts. And it's reaction on the new appointment by Twitter is not clear yet.

On Monday, the High Court had issued a notice to Twitter after a petition alleged that the social media giant was not complying with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which came into effect last month.

Last week, tensions between the Indian government and Twitter escalated after the social media giant said it was concerned by the use of "intimidation tactics" by the police and asked the government to respect freedom of speech.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) responded asking the microblogging site to "stop beating around the bush" and "comply with the laws of the land".

As the new rules came into effect, Twitter had expressed concerns regarding their employees in India and potential threat to freedom of expression for people they serve.

Meanwhile, US based Google Search, the Alphabet Inc.-owned company told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday that the new IT rules for digital media are not applicable to its search engine. It also urged the High Court to set aside a single-judge order which applied the rules on the company while dealing with an issue related to removal of offending content from the internet. The HC sought the Centre's response to Google's plea by July 25.

Although search engines maintains a consistent policy over removal of objectionable content from search results, a Google spokesperson said the Delhi High Court order has cast certain obligations that would wrongly classify Google search as a social media intermediary.

The new IT rules include complaint resolution, monitoring of objectionable content, compliance report and removal of objectionable content. For this, the social media firms and OTT platforms are required to appoint India-based compliance officials.

The government said social media firms are creating hurdles for this, insisting on getting clearance from their headquarters in the US.