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Twitter today sought 8 weeks time to appoint Regular Resident Grievance Redressal Officer after the Delhi High court on Monday expressed displeasure at Twitter's delay in appointment of a Resident Grievance Officer as per Rule 4 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

It has also been informed that Interim Chief compliance officer has been appointed on July 6, 2021 and the appointment of an Interim Grievance officer will be made by July 11. Further Interim contact nodal officer will be appointed within 2 weeks.

Twitter has further stated that,
 "While Twitter is striving to comply with the 2021 Rules, Twitter reserves its right to challenge the legality, validity, & vires of the Rules, and Twitter’s submissions regarding compliance are filed without prejudice to its right to challenge the Rules."

In the previous hearing Justice Rekha Palli observed that on  May 31, 2021, Twitter had said that it had already appointed a resident grievance officer after which the court asked it to file an affidavit disclosing the same.

Later when the affidavit was filed, it was found that Twitter had appointed only an interim resident grievance officer which according to Justice Palli's Knowledge had resigned and as on date there was no resident grievance officer. 

The Court had then directed Senior Advocate Sajan Poovayya appearing for Twitter to seek instructions in a day as to when is twitter going to comply with the rules.

The Case pertains to a plea filed by Advocate Amit Acharya  alleging that Twitter has not complied with the Centre’s IT Rules to appoint a resident grievance officer, seeking directions to the social media platform to comply with the rules

The petitioner has stated that the Information Technology Rules came into effect from February 25 and the Centre had given three months to every social media intermediary, including Twitter, to comply with them.

The petitioner stated that he came to know about the alleged non-compliance when he tried to lodge a complaint against a couple of tweets.

 

Case Title: Amit Acharya vs Union of India and Ors