Twitter India appoints US employee as grievance officer after interim appointee quits

Amidst the tussle with the Union Government over the new IT rules, as Twitter's interim grievance officer stepped down on Sunday, the micro-blogging site has appointed one of its US-based employees to fill in the vacancy created. The new rules for social media intermediaries mandate the appointment of a grievance officer, nodal officer and compliance officer - all of whom are needed to be residents of India and employees of the social media platform. Now, with Twitter's interim grievance officer quitting, the US-based platform has appointed its Global Legal Policy Director Jeremy Kessel as the grievance officer for India to partially comply with new IT rules. 

Twitter's interim grievance officer resigns

On May 31, Twitter had told the Delhi High Court that it was appointing Dharmendra Chatur as the interim grievance officer. However, the Centre had rejected the appointment citing that it could accept outsiders to the statutory posts as Dharmendra Chatur was a partner at the law firm that represented Twitter. In less than a month after his appointment, Dharmendra Chatur stepped down as the grievance officer, leaving the mandatory posts vacant. The delay in the appointment of the three officers has also led to Twitter losing its intermediary status and thereby its legal shield in India. 

Pertinently, Twitter was given three months to appoint persons for the said position as the new IT rules were notified on February 26 this year and came into effect from May 26. Meanwhile, listings for job openings for the position of all three positions have been spotted on LinkedIn as Twitter has maintained that it 'strives' to comply with India's new IT laws. 

As per the new IT rules, all significant social media companies, with over 50 lakh user base shall appoint a grievance officer to deal with such complaints and share the name and contact details of such officers. Twitter in response to the final notice issued by the government on June 5 had said that it intends to comply with the new IT rules and will share details of the chief compliance officer. In the meantime, the microblogging platform had appointed Chatur as interim resident grievance officer for India. According to a government official, the company has lost legal protection as an intermediary and will be legally held responsible for all content posted by its users on the platform.  The IT rules also allow the Government to direct Intermediaries to remove or disable, content that displays partial or full nudity, sexual act, morphed images, etc within 24 hours of the complaint received.