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The Delhi High Court today expressing 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 said " How long does the process take, if Twitter thinks it can take as long as it takes in this country, that will not be allowed."

The single judge bench led by Justice Rekha Palli has 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.

Justice 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. 

Justice Palli said that Twitter was in defiance of law for not appointing the grievance officer as per the new IT Rules.

Twitter has said that it is in the process of appointing a new resident grievance officer. 

Court has granted Twitter a days time to respond on compliance of the rules.

ASG Chetan Sharma for the Central Government submitted that "IT Rules came into effect in February 2021 after which 3 months time was granted. It expired in May and now we are in July where there is about 40 days delay in compliance of the rules."

The bench however said that it was not disposing the matter and the government was free to take action in case of non compliance.

The Court was hearing 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