Twitter names Vinay Prakash as Resident Grievance Officer for India under new IT rules

Days after being pulled up by the Delhi HC, social media giant Twitter on Sunday appointed a Resident Grievance Officer for India in compliance with the Centre's new IT rules. In an official notice, Twitter named Vinay Prakash as its Resident Grievance Officer for India and updated its guidelines allowing Indian users to report violations through its Help Center. Twitter also shared the contact details of the Resident Grievance Officer for Indian users. Its interim physical contact address has been listed as- 4th Floor, The Estate, 121 Dickenson Road, Bangalore 560 042. Earlier this week, it had informed the Delhi HC that a new liaison office will serve as its permanent physical contact address and it had begun hiring employees to comply with the new rules.

Delhi HC denies interim protection to Twitter

The development comes after the Delhi High Court while hearing a petition filed in relation to Twitter's compliance with the new IT Rules denied interim protection to the social media giant. The single-judge bench comprising Justice Rekha Palli gave the Central government a free hand to take action against Twitter for non-compliance with the IT Rules as it may deem fit and proper, noting that it was already in violation of the set deadline. 

Granting Twitter the exception to file an affidavit, Justice Palli made it clear that 'no kind of protection is given to Twitter, and the Centre is free to take any action against it if it finds Twitter in violation of the rules'. The statement was made keeping in mind that Twitter was already in violation of the deadline set by the Centre for compliance with the new IT Rules. 

Twitter had informed the High Court that it will try to appoint a Resident Grievance Officer within 8 weeks. Notably, last month Twitter had appointed Dharmendra Chatur as its interim resident grievance officer for India. However, he stepped down shortly after his appointment on June 21. In its affidavit, Twitter mentioned that it had engaged the services of an interim Chief Compliance Officer via a third-party contractor with effect from July 6. However, it said that 8 more weeks will be required to fill this post as well.

Twitter publishes compliance report

Meanwhile, after a long tussle, Twitter on Sunday published its compliance report under the new IT Rules. According to the 'India Transparency report' for July 2021, the platform received 38 grievances across 12 categories and took action against 133 URLs in response to the complaints.

“We receive complaints in our Grievance Officer - India channel that relate to account verification, account access, or seeking assistance or information regarding an account or Twitter’s enforcement actions that are not included in the data below. The majority of complaints received in this channel during this reporting period fell into these categories,” Twitter said.

Most grievances (20) were cited under the Defamation category and the social media platform took action against 87 URLs in response. Six issues were related to abuse/harassment where 38 URLs were actioned. Three complaints were related to impersonation whereby action was taken against one URL and four complaints were related to IP-related infringement which includes Copyright, Trademark, or other IP-related issues. No action was taken against any URLs under this category.

Accoridng to the platform, it received only one complaint under the Misinformation / Synthetic and Manipulated Media category whereby action was taken against one URL. The remaining complaints were related to Sensitive Adult Content (4) and to Privacy Infringement (3) whereby action was taken against six URLs.