The Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC), a platform which will allow users to appeal against decisions of social media firms like Twitter or Facebook with regard to blocking of content or accounts, will be the country’s first redressal forum which will function fully online.
The chairpersons and other members of the three GACs constituted by the government will not have any office and not conduct any physical hearings. From the time of the filing of the complaints by users to hearing them and pronouncing the final order, everything will be conducted online.
The portal for filing complaints was launched by minister of state for electronics and IT (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Tuesday. He said the GAC mechanism is a key milestone in the evolving framework that ensures that the internet is open, safe, trusted and accountable to users.
“GAC is an institution whose main aim is to ensure that grievance redressal mechanisms of platforms are functional, responsive to people, and as an exception when that function is unable to resolve a grievance, the appeals will come to GAC,” Chandrasekhar said.
The way the portal and GACs will function is as follows: Any user not happy with any content either displayed or blocked on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook or similar platforms first needs to lodge a complaint with the grievance redressal officers of the platform concerned. If the user is not satisfied with the verdict of the platform’s officer, he/she can file a complaint on the GAC portal. The portal will then direct the complaints to one of the GACs.
The GAC concerned will then meet online with the complainant and the platform’s redressal officer and hear both the parties, and then pronounce its order. Its order will be binding on the platform. The appellants can track the status of their appeal through the appellant log in window and GACs will upload its order on the portal. The appellant will receive notification of the same by SMS and email.
Appeals against GAC order by either parties can be filed in court of law – high courts or Supreme Court.
In January, the government had formed three GACs with three members. As per the framework, each of the three GACs will have a chairperson, and two whole-time members who will hold office for a term of three years from the date they assume charge. The first panel will be chaired by chief executive officer of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the ministry of home affairs. The whole-time members in the panel include Ashutosh Shukla, a retired Indian Police Service officer, and Sunil Soni, former chief general manager and chief information officer of Punjab National Bank
The second panel will be chaired by the joint secretary in charge of the policy and administration division in the ministry of information and broadcasting. It will include Sunil Kumar Gupta, retired former director of personnel services at Indian Navy, and Kavindra Sharma, former vice-president of consulting at L&T Infotech.
The third panel will be chaired by Kavita Bhatia, a senior scientist at MeitY. Sanjay Goel, former traffic service officer of the Indian Railways