Friday, 28 May 2021 | PNS | New Delhi
Hours after Twitter expressed concerns regarding the safety of its employees and “potential threat to freedom of expression” for its users, the Centre lashed out at US-based microblogging site asking it to stop beating around the bush and comply with the rules framed by the Ministry of Information and Technology.
In a strongly worded statement, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said the statement by the social media intermediary was an attempt to dictate its terms to the world’s largest democracy, and accused Twitter of trying to undermine India’s legal system with its “actions and deliberate defiance”.
The Ministry said it “strongly controverts” the claims made by Twitter in its press release. The statement has been posted on Koo, the India-made social media platform, which gained traction earlier this year after the long-standing spat between the Centre on Twitter started around January-February. It termed Twitter’s statement “unfortunate”, totally baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their own follies”.
“Twitter needs to stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land. Lawmaking & policy formulation is the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform & it has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be,” the Ministry said.
Through its actions and deliberate defiance, Twitter seeks to undermine India’s legal system, it added.
“The Government condemns the unfortunate statement issued by Twitter as totally baseless, false and an attempt to defame India to hide their own follies,” the IT Ministry said.
“Twitter refuses to comply with those very regulations in the Intermediary Guidelines on the basis of which it is claiming a safe harbour protection from any criminal liability in India,” the Ministry said.
The strongly-worded statement said the only instance of scuttling free speech on Twitter is Twitter itself and its opaque policies. “As a result of this, people’s accounts are suspended and tweets deleted arbitrarily without recourse.”
“India has a glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices dating back centuries. Protecting free speech in India is not the prerogative of only a private, for-profit, foreign entity like Twitter,” it added.
The Ministry also said law making and policy formulation is the “sole prerogative of the sovereign” and a social media platform like Twitter has no locus in dictating what should India’s legal policy framework should be.
“The Government also wishes to emphatically assure that representatives of social media companies including Twitter are and will always remain safe in India and there is no threat to their personal safety and security,” it said.
It also accused Twitter of having a dual approach in responding to events concerning the US and those concerning India. “Twitter chose to take suo-moto action against those users who it considered as perpetrators of violence at the Capitol Hill in the USA. But, just a few days after the unlawful incidents on Red Fort in Delhi, Twitter refused to take prompt action on the lawful request made by the Government of India to block contents,” the Government said.
Citing another example, it said Twitter also chose to show the geo-location of certain locations in Ladakh as part of China at a time when India and China were engaged in peaceful resolution of border-related issues through bilateral dialogue. “Twitter took several days, that too only after repeated reminders, to rectify this blatant disrespect to India’s sensitivity and territorial integrity.”
The Government accused Twitter of having “lack of responsibility” and said this has led to “rampant proliferation of fake and harmful content against India and Indians”.
“Promoting vaccine hesitancy has been rampantly done through the use of Twitter platform and yet Twitter has taken no action. Is this commitment to the people of India?” it asked.
“Twitter Inc., a USA-based private company, in its communique says it seeks ‘constructive dialogue’, ‘collaborative approach’ from the Government of a sovereign democratic republic to ‘safeguard interests of the public’. It is time that Twitter disabuses itself of this grandiosity and comply with the laws of India,” the Government said.
