Twitter on Sunday named Vinay Prakash as its Resident Grievance Officer for India, the microblogging platform posted on its site.
This development comes after Twitter lost its immunity in India for failing to comply with the Centre’s new IT rules.
According to the Centre’s new IT rules, among other requirements, significant social media intermediaries are required to appoint three key personnel -- chief compliance officer, nodal officer and grievance officer. All the three personnel have to be residents in India.
The Centre’s deadline for digital platforms to accept its latest IT compliance requirements came to an end on May 25th.
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While announcing the new IT rules on February 25, the Centre had said that if “significant social media intermediaries” failed to comply with the new requirements by May 25, they will lose their intermediary status. “Significant social media intermediaries” refers to those digital platforms which have more than 50 lakh registered users.
As per the information updated on Twitter's website, Vinay Prakash is the Resident Grievance Officer (RGO). Users can contact him using an email ID listed on the page.
"Twitter can be contacted in India at the following address: 4th Floor, The Estate, 121 Dickenson Road, Bangalore 560 042," the page further said.
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Prakash's name appears along with Jeremy Kessel, who is the Global Legal Policy Director, and is based in the US.
The company has also published its compliance report for the period of May 26, 2021, to June 25, 2021. This was another key requirement under the IT rules that came into effect on May 26.
Twitter had previously appointed Dharmendra Chatur as its interim resident grievance officer for India as required by the IT rules. However, Chatur stepped down last month.
Twitter has been at loggerheads with the Indian government over the new social media rules. The government has confronted Twitter over deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country's new IT rules, despite repeated reminders.
Twitter -- which has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India -- lost its legal shield as an intermediary in India, becoming liable for users posting any unlawful content.
On July 8, Twitter had informed the Delhi High Court that it has appointed an interim chief compliance officer, who is a resident of India, and that it will make an endeavour to fill the regular position within eight weeks as per the new IT Rules.
It had also said it was in the process of making an appointment to an Indian resident as its interim RGO and it expected to do so on or before July 11 and details would be updated on its 'Help Page' as soon as possible.
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(With PTI inputs)
