NEW DELHI: Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO of Twitter in 2021, claimed in an interview that the Indian government "threatened" the company by threatening a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with requests to remove posts and restrict accounts critical of the government during the farmers' protest against new agri laws in 2020 and 2021.
Rejecting the allegations, Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar launched a scathing attack, saying Dorsey's Twitter administration "had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law... It behaved as if Indian laws did not apply to it."
In Shimla, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said Dorsey was seeking to cover up prior wrongdoings, and Twitter's internal conversations had revealed that the platform was "misused and there was bias and tinkering."
Amit Malviya, the BJP's IT department chief, said that the social media business broke the law between 2020 and 2022, when Dorsey was in charge.
Opposition parties soon used Dorsey's statements to attack the government, with the Congress claiming that when farmers protested, the government tried to bury the story.
It is worth mentioning that Twitter's new CEO, Elon Musk, has previously described India's social media laws as "strict." Musk stated in April of this year that he would rather comply with the government's banning orders than risk sending Twitter employees to jail.
Musk was apparently referring to India's Information Technology Rules, 2021, which state that a top representative of a social media company, known as the chief compliance officer, can face jail time for violating the rules.
The Centre has urged Twitter to remove nearly 1,200 accounts for supposed "Khalistan" links at the height of the country's farmers' protest in 2021. Previously, it had requested that more than 250 accounts be removed from the platform.
Twitter replied by blocking some of the accounts but later unblocking them, which irritated the IT ministry.
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