Laws of land supreme, not your policy: Parliamentary panel grills Twitter

New Delhi, June 19: Shashi Tharoor led Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology grilled the social media giant for not complying with new IT laws. It also slammed the social media giant saying "The law of the land is 'supreme' than your companies policy."

 

 

During the meeting when the panel asked Twitter representatives whether if Twitter India follows the law of the land, on which Twitter officials blatantly told the panel that its policies were more important than the laws of India. They also added that they won’t follow Indian laws if they conflict with Twitter policies. To which panel members pulled up a social media giant saying that the law of the land is "supreme" and order the company to abide by them.

 

 

 

The panel also asked Twitter India's public policy manager Shagufta Kamran and legal counsel Ayushi Kapoor, "Why it should not be fined as it has been found "violating" rules of the country." To this, the Twitter officials replied that it is following rules and had appointed an interim chief compliance officer. However, the members noted that the rules require the appointment of a chief compliance officer and Twitter has "failed” to do so.

 

 

Some members also pointed out that Twitter was fined in Ireland earlier "for not following the country’s law”. Moreover, the panel has sought a written reply from Twitter on various questions. The committee is also expected to summon Twitter officials again, having indicated that discussions would continue.

 

On Wednesday, Twitter lost legal protection in India. With that now, the company will now be held responsible for tweets, data hosted by it. Yesterday, Ghaziabad police investigating the Loni fake ‘hate crime’ case, has sent a legal notice to Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari and asked him to record his statement within the coming 7 days.

.

.