Opposition MPs to discuss former Twitter CEO’s ’Pressure’ remark in Parliamentary panel meet today
- A parliamentary standing committee, led by Lok Sabha MP Jadhav Prataprao Ganpatrao from the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), is scheduled to convene today. The committee has been summoned to address the crucial topics of citizen data security and privacy.
As the controversy escalates following former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's claim that the Indian Government threatened to shut down the platform's operations in the country, opposition party Members of Parliament (MPs) are poised to address the issue during the upcoming meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Communication and Information Technology (IT) on Thursday.
As per a report by ANI, an opposition party MP said, “We will raise the recent statement of the former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey's allegation in which the Government of India threatened to block Twitter during the farmer protests in the country. We would seek a response from the official attending the meeting today on behalf of the government.”
The MP further stressed that the Opposition MPs want the chairman to allow the issue concerned with Dorsey's "pressure" remark to be raised in the meeting and the government to respond to it.
A parliamentary standing committee, led by Lok Sabha MP Jadhav Prataprao Ganpatrao from the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), is scheduled to convene today. The committee has been summoned to address the crucial topics of citizen data security and privacy.
The committee agenda read, “Evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on the subject 'Citizens' data security and privacy.”
The parliamentary committee comprises a total of 31 members representing various parties from both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
In a recent interview aired on a YouTube channel, the former CEO of Twitter made allegations suggesting that the Indian government had issued threats to close down the microblogging platform.
In an interview, Dorsey had noted that India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers' protests, around particular journalists who were critical of the government and it manifested in ways such as we will shut Twitter down in India, India is a big marketplace for us. “We would raid the homes of your employees, which they did and we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit and this is India, a democratic country.”
Earlier on Tuesday, on Tuesday, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar hit out at Jack Dorsey's Indian government's "pressure" remark. Chandrasekhar alleged that between 2020 and 2022, Twitter was found violating Indian law multiple times and the platform had started to comply with the law only in 2022.
Reacting to Dorsey's claim, Rajeev Chandrasekhar called it "an outright lie" and "an attempt to brush out the very dubious period" of the social media company's history. He said that Twitter "weaponised misinformation" against Indians and the government of India during the period of 2020.
Speaking to ANI, Chandrasekhar said, "Twitter which is now in the public domain, during this period, was not only partisan but was behaving in an absolutely arbitrary manner and the Twitter files that have then come out after Jack Dorsey sold Twitter exposed it to be a platform that abused its power, misused its power."
"Between 2020-2022, Twitter violated Indian law multiple times. It started complying with the law only in 2022. During that entire period, nobody went to jail, and nobody was raided," Chandrasekhar said.
(With inputs from ANI)
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Business NewsNewsIndiaOpposition MPs to discuss former Twitter CEO’s ’Pressure’ remark in Parliamentary panel meet today
First Published:15 Jun 2023, 11:04 AM IST
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