The Centre on Monday told the Delhi High Court that social media company Twitter Inc has failed to comply with India’s new IT Rules, which is law of the land and is mandatorily required to be complied with. The Centre, in an affidavit filed in the High Court, said any non-compliance amounts to breach of provisions of IT Rules, leading to US-based Twitter losing its immunity conferred under the IT Act.
The affidavit has been filed in response to a plea by lawyer Amit Acharya, in which he claimed non-compliance of the Centre’s new IT Rules by the microblogging platform. The matter is scheduled to come up for hearing on Tuesday. The Centre’s affidavit, filed by N Samaya Balan, working as Scientist-E in the Cyber Law Group with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), said admittedly Twitter Inc is an intermediary within the meaning of provision of IT Act, 2000 and a Significant Social Media Intermediary (SSMI) under the IT Rules 2021.
It said that in spite of the three months’ time granted to all SSMIs to comply with the IT Rules 2021 having expired on May 26, Twitter has “failed to fully comply” with the same. The IT Rules were notified on February 25.
The affidavit, filed through Central government standing counsel Ripudaman Singh Bhardwaj, said that Twitter has failed to comply with the IT Rules, 2021 as on July 1 for the following reasons—chief compliance officer has not been appointed; the position of the RGO is vacant; the position of nodal contact person (even on an interim basis) is vacant, and the physical contact address, which was shown to be there on May 29, is not available again on Twitter website.