Twitter appointed officers in compliance with new IT Rules, Centre tells Delhi High Court

The Centre has informed the Delhi High Court that Twitter has appointed Chief Compliance Officer CCO Resident Grievance Officer RGO and Nodal Contact Person in compliance with the new IT RulesThe Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MEITY in a short affidavit said Twitter has acknowledged that the personnel CCO Nodal Contact Person and RGO are appointed as the companys employees and not as contingent workersTwitter has provided the names of the said appointed personnel and their respective positions also The said affidavit of Twitter mentions their employment start date as August 4 2021 Twitter has further enclosed their employment contracts along with the said affidavit as proof of such appointments the ministry saidThe court had on August 10 directed the Centre to file a short affidavit in response to Twitters affidavit in which the company had shown compliance with IT RulesI submit that Twitter has appointed the personnel in compliance to the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021 hereinafter referred as IT Rules 2021iquest N Samaya Balan working as ScientistE in the Cyber Law Group with the MEITY said in the affidavitJustice Rekha Palli who was hearing a petition alleging noncompliance of IT Rules by the USbased microblogging site is scheduled to hear the matter on October 5 The Centres affidavit further said the IT Rules 2021 is a law of the land and Twitter is mandatorily required to comply with the IT Rules 2021 in its entiretyAny noncompliance amounts to a breach of the provisions of the IT Rules 2021 thereby leading to Twitter losing its immunity conferred under section 79I of the IT Act 2000 The exemptions conferred on intermediaries under section 79I is a conditional exemption subject to the intermediary satisfying the conditions under sections 792 and 793 Further as per rule 7 failure to observe the IT Rules 2021 will result in the nonapplicability of Section 791 of the IT Act 2000 to such an intermediary and the intermediary shall become liable for any punishment under any law for the time being in force in respect of the offending content it saidIt further said that the IT Rules 2021 also mandate that a Significant Social media Intermediary SSMI must have a physical contact address in India published on its public platforms to receive communications addressed to it The SSMI has to enable a mechanism that provides a unique ticket number for every complaint or grievance which enables the complainant to track the status of such complaint or grievance as per the rule and Twitter is also responsible to submit compliance reports as mandated in the IT Rules it saidThe Centre had earlier told the court that Twitter was prima facie in compliance with the new IT Rules by appointing the officers permanently Twitter had earlier said the appointed persons will work on a fulltime basis and are fully capable of performing the functions in terms of the lawOn July 28 the court had expressed displeasure over Twitter appointing a contingent worker as CCO and said that the social media platform was in noncompliance with the new IT Rules The Centre had said in its affidavit that Twitter failed to comply with Indias new IT Rules which could lead to its losing immunity conferred under the IT ActAlso Read Hate speech case Delhi HC grants bail to organiser of Jantar Mantar eventPetitionerlawyer Amit Acharya claimed that he came to know about the alleged noncompliance of IT Rules by Twitter when he tried to complain about a couple of tweets The Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code Rules 2021 seek to regulate dissemination and publication of content in cyberspace including social media platforms and were notified in February by the central governmentThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever