'Outright Lie': MoS IT On Jack Dorsey's Claims Of India Threatening To Shut Down Twitter During Farmer Protests

Union Minister of State for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar hit out at former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for the latter's claims that the Indian government asked Twitter to take down accounts of journalists critical of the government during the farmer protests in 2021.

In an interview, Dorsey claimed that the Indian government had warned Twitter with raids and that Twitter would be shut down in India if it didn't follow the government's "requests".

"This is an outright lie by Jack - perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitter's history," the minister said.

"Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied," he added.

"No one went to jail nor was twitter "shutdown"," the minister said, adding that Dorsey's Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law.

"It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it. India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India," he said.

"During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake. GoI was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform because it had the potential to further inflame the situation based on fake news," he added.

"Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA," the minister said.

"To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail," he added.

"Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws. There is ample evidence now in public domain abt Jacks twitter's arbitrary, blatantly partisan n discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period (sic)," the minister said.

Twitter under Dorsey was not just violating Indian law, but was partisan in how it was using "deamplify" and deplatforming of some "arbitrarily in violation of Article 14 and 19 of our constitution and also assisting in weaponising of misinformation", he added.

The minister said that the government's policies remain clear for all Intermediaries operating in India - compliance with laws to ensure Internet is safe, trusted and accountable.