Deepali Kalia
Delhi High Court on May 31 issued a notice in a plea filed against Twitter India and Twitter Inc. for not complying with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021) and remarked that if the rules have not stayed then they must be complied with.
A single-judge bench consisting of Justice Rekha Palli has given three weeks to Twitter to file its response and has listed the matter for further hearing on July 6.
The plea was filed by Amit Acharya, a practising advocate.
The petition stated that Acharya is a “subscriber and user of Twitter” and while scrolling his Twitter on May 26, 2021, he had come across “defamatory, false and untrue tweets” by 2 individuals.
In order to file a complaint, he had looked for the Resident Grievance Officer as per the rules but was unable to find any information about Resident grievance Officer on Twitter’s page which was a clear violation of Sub-Rule 2(a) of Rule 3 which says that the intermediary shall prominently publish on its website, mobile-based application or both, as the case may be, the name of the Grievance Officer and his contact details.”
Therefore, the petition claimed that Twitter and Twitter India “have deprived him of his statutory right to lodge a complaint before the Resident Grievance Officer.”
The petition also stated that “According to Rule 4(c) of the aforesaid IT Rules since Twitter is a “Significant Social Media Intermediary” (SSMI), it has to appoint a “Resident Grievance Officer”, who shall, amongst others, be responsible for the redressal and disposal of complaints made by a user or “victim” on the platform.”
The petition thus stated that Twitter was in noncompliance with IT Rules 2021 as it has not yet appointed any Resident Grievance Officer, Nodal Officer and Chief Compliance Officer.