New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party’s national president of IT cell Amit Malviya on Monday slammed the microblogging platform Twitter for showing distorted map of India.
Twitter has once again shown a distorted map of India on its website. The map shows Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh detached from India.
Speaking to ANI, Amit Malviya said, “This is not the first time that twitter has got India’s map wrong and that’s perhaps the reason why intermediary guidelines mandate that social media and tech company employees should understand the local cultural sensitivities in territorial issues. I guess it is time to realise that there is inadequacy in compliance with the law of land”.
Microblogging site Twitter has once again displayed on its website a distorted map of India, this time showing Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as not part of the country.
The distorted map appears under the Twitter website’s Career section under the heading ‘Tweep Life’ section and shows Jammu and Kashmir as a separate county and Ladakh as a part of China.
The distorted map has attracted criticism from several netizens.
Earlier in October 2020, Twitter had labelled the Indian territory of Leh in Ladakh as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Responding to a question on the appointment of non-Indian Grevience officer for India, he said, “That is not in complaince with what law mandates. Twitter must follow the letter and do what is expected of them”.
Twitter, which is already under pressure to comply with the new norms in India, has faced severe criticism from the government along with warnings of legal proceedings for non-compliance in recent times. Twitter and the Centre have been at loggerheads over several issues for the last few months.
Amid the ongoing tussle between the Centre and microblogging platform Twitter regarding the compliance of newly IT laws, the interim Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) for India of the company has stepped down from his post on Sunday, said sources.
As per the new IT rules, the new RGO has been appointed to address the complaints from Indian subscribers.
According to sources, Dharmendra Chatur who was recently appointed as the interim resident grievance officer for Twitter India has been stepped down from his post on Sunday.
However, Twitter India’s spokesperson denied to comment on this matter.
Meanwhile, on Twitter’s Help Centre page, the name of Grievance Officer for India is currently shown as Jeremy Kessel instead of Dharmendra Chatur.
Earlier on June 9, Twitter had written to the government that it was making every effort to comply with new guidelines concerning social media companies and has appointed a nodal contractual person (NCP) and Resident Grievance Officer (RGO) on a contractual basis and was in advanced stages of “finalising the appointment to the role of a chief compliance officer,” sources said.
Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had on June 5 said that it had given Twitter one last notice to comply with the new rules concerning social media companies.
The ministry said in the letter that the New Intermediary Guideline Rules have become effective from May 26.
“The provisions for significant social media intermediaries under the Rules have already come into force on May 26 2021 and it has been more than a week but Twitter has refused to comply with the provisions of these Rules. Needless to state, such non-compliance will lead to unintended consequences including Twitter losing exemption from liability as intermediary available under section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. This has clearly been provided under rule 7 of the aforesaid Rules,” it said.