Union Minister for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar came down heavily on Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey over the former CEO’s claims that the Indian government asked the social media platform to act against accounts criticising the Narendra Modi government during the 2020-21 farmers’ protest.
Taking to Twitter, the Union Minister posted: “This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history.”
Jack Dorsey’s claims
During an interview to YouTube channel Breaking Points, Dorsey said: “India is a country that had many requests of us around the farmers’ protest, around particular journalists that were critical of the government and it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’, which is a very large market for us. ‘We will raid the homes of your employees’, which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit’. And this is India, a democratic country”.
The video was shared on Twitter by Srinivas BV, National President of the Indian Youth Congress.
Twitter violated Indian law
According to the minister, Jack Dorsey and his team at Twitter were found to be repeatedly and continuously violating the Indian law from 2020 to 2022, and it was not until June 2022 that they finally abided by the law.
No one from Twitter was sent to jail, and the platform was not shut down, stated Chandrasekhar, adding that Twitter had a problem accepting the sovereignty of the Indian law, and behaved as if Indian laws did not apply to it.
The minister said that India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in the country.
“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 wrote in his tweet.
The minister further went on to say that under Jack Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter was not only violating the Indian law but also demonstrated a significant level of partisan behaviour.
They had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, but took action when similar events occurred in the USA, the minister wrote.
This inconsistency raised concerns about Twitter’s arbitrary and discriminatory conduct, as well as the misuse of its power on its platform during that period, he added.
The Union Minister also cited “deamplifying” and deplatforming of some accounts arbitrarily, which was in violation of Articles 14 and 19 of the Indian Constitution.
Farmers’ protest
In November 2020, farmers began their demonstration at three Delhi border points—Ghazipur, Tikri, and Singhu—against the three contentious farm laws passed by Parliament in September. The protests continued for a year before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in November 2021 that the three laws are repealed. Farmer unions had demanded for a legal guarantee on the minimum support price (MSP) for crops among other asks.