Twitter India has filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court, saying that they are in the process of appointing a grievance officer after Dharmendra Chatur an interim grievance officer, stepped down from the post after a few weeks on the job. The affidavit has been filed by Micah L Rubbo, Senior Counsel and Twitter Inc’s Director of Litigation, said that the microblogging platform is in the final stages of appointing a replacement. In the meanwhile, the grievances of Indian users are being addressed by the Grievance Officer.
Twitter has filed an affidavit in Delhi High Court in response to a petition filed by a user Amit Acharya, who contended that the three-month period got over on May 25, 2021, but to date, no resident grievance officer has been appointed by Twitter to deal with complaints regarding tweets on its platform. He also alleged that his complaint against Tweets were not acted upon promptly by the social media giant.
“An Interim Resident Grievance officer was appointed as per the new IT Rules. However, even before steps could be taken to completely formalise the arrangement, the official withdrew his candidature on 21.6.2021,” Twitter told the High court.Twitter also informed that the IT Rules clearly state that only the “victim” can file complaint with the grievance officer.
In its affidavit, Twitter said the grievance of the petitioner was received and acknowledged by the answering respondent/ Twitter within 24 hours on May 26, 2021. Further, the grievance has also been disposed of within the period of 15 days on June 9 as prescribed by Rule 3(2)of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“Intermediaries Guidelines”). Twitter also said that the claim of the petitioner should be rendered infructuous since he hasn’t made authors of those tweets as party respondents from whom he is aggrieved of. The matter is listed for hearing on July 6 before the Delhi High Court.
A day after Dharmendra Chatur resigned from the post, Twitter appointed its California-based global legal policy director Jeremy Kessel as the new grievance officer for India. However, the new IT Rules call for an Indian resident for the role.