Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other top officials of the micro-blogging platform declined to appear before the Parliamentary panel that sent them a summon notice on the issue of safeguarding citizens’ right on social media.
The summon was issued by a Parliamentary Committee headed by BJP Member of Parliament Anurag Thakur via an official letter on Feb 1. The meeting was scheduled for February 7 but later postponed to February 11 in order to allow more time to Twitter CEO and other officials to appear before the panel.
Twitter cited “short notice of the hearing” as the reason, despite being given ten days to make themselves available. However, Times Now has learnt that Twitter’s interim Country Director for India might appear before the Parliamentary panel.
Anurag Thakur told the news agency ANI that the government has taken a “serious note” of Twitter’s reply. “We’ll discuss that on Monday (February 11) and take further action,” he said.
The Parliamentary IT Committee, in its February 1 letter to the tech giant stated: “it may be noted that the Head of the Organisation has to appear before the Committee”. It further stated that “He/She may be accompanied by another representative.”
In response to the government letter, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s global lead for legal, policy, trust and safety, on February 7, in a letter said, “no one who engages publicly for Twitter India makes enforcement decisions with respect to our rules for content or accounts in India.”
The company’s decision to depute a relatively junior officer for the meeting with the Parliamentary panel has irked the BJP which warned it of “repercussions”, as per the news agency PTI.
“In any country, no agency has the right to disrespect the institutions of that country. In this situation, if Twitter is disrespecting the established institution of Parliament, then there are repercussions,” BJP spokesperson and New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi told PTI.
“There are repercussions because in any democratic country, institutions need to be respected by the world powers. If there is any violation of any sort, then there are repercussions to those violations…The institutions need to be respected,” she added.
Indian Parliamentary panel is the fourth country after US Congress, Singapore and EU to summon the company for a hearing.
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