The Central government on Tuesday, August 10, 2021, informed the Delhi High Court that Twitter had “prima facie” complied with the new Information Technology Rules, 2021, by appointing permanently a Chief Compliance Officer (COO), a Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) and a Nodal Contact Person (NCP).
Also read earlier report: Twitter defaming India, defying laws, says government
Following this, the court directed the Centre to submit an affidavit highlighting the new development within two weeks. It posted the case for October 5.
During the brief hearing, senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, representing Twitter, submitted that the microblogging site had in compliance with the new IT Rules made the appointments.
Twitter had come under fire from the court for delaying the appointment of officials in India on a permanent basis. The court had also expressed reservations over Twitter changing the status of the appointment of CCO from ‘interim’ to ‘contingent’ in its affidavit. It had remarked that the rules mandated the appointment of a senior employee as CCO, but Twitter, according to its affidavit, had appointed a ‘contingent worker’ through a third party contractor.
The court’s remarks came while hearing a plea by advocate Amit Acharya seeking a direction to Twitter to appoint a permanent official.
Mr Acharya said in his plea that from February 25, 2021 the IT Rules 2021 have come into effect and the Centre had given three months’ time to every significant social media intermediary to comply with the Rules.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had told the court that despite three months granted to all Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs) to comply with the Rules, Twitter has failed to fully comply with India’s law regulating tech companies rendering their services as ‘intermediaries’.
Section 79 of the IT Act shields social media platforms or intermediaries such as Twitter from liability for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by it in certain cases.
The Ministry said when an intermediary fails to observe the Rules, the intermediary could be liable for any punishment under any law for the time being in force in respect of the offending content.