
Just a few days after being appointed as the interim resident grievance officer for Twitter India, Dharmendra Chatur has stepped down from his position.
Twitter’s website no longer shows his name, as is compulsory under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which require every tech company to appoint a grievance officer.
Twitter has not responded to the matter yet. Currently, the contact information for a grievance officer in India mentions Jeremy Kessel. But Kessel is based out of San Francisco, United States.
Social media platforms, especially Twitter, have come under the radar and are expected to comply with the new norms. The government of India has warned Twitter multiple times over failure to comply with potential legal action.
On Friday, Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad briefly lost access to his Twitter account. He was unable to access his account for an hour due to an alleged violation of the US’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
After losing access for a while, Prasad took to Koo, an Indian-made platform to express his thoughts, calling the action by Twitter a “gross violation of the IT guidelines”.
Twitter no longer holds the status of an intermediary platform in India for not complying with the new guidelines. On multiple occasions, Prasad has pressed hard on the company to comply with new rules. Without intermediary status, the company no longer has a legal shield in India and could face prosecution over posts.
Recently, Twitter had announced the appointment of an interim Chief Compliance Officer in sync with new laws. The company added that the details would be shared with IT ministry directly.