IT minister Ravi Shankar says Twitter blocked his account for an hour

Amid the tussle between Twitter and the union government over the new IT rules Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was denied access to his Twitter account for almost an hour over alleged violation of the US Digital Millennium Copyright ActAlthough he was subsequently allowed to access the account taking to Indiamade microblogging platform Koo the minister called the action by the USheadquartered Twitter as a gross violation of the IT guidelinesTwitters actions were in gross violation of Rule 48 of the Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account he saidPrasad who has been at the forefront of governments drive to bring in more compliance and stricter norms for social media platforms added It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact have clearly ruffled its feathersFurther the minister who also handles the portfolio of law said that it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individuals account which does not suit their agendaIn a series of posts on Koo the minister also said that Twitters actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda with the threat that if you do not toe the line they draw they will arbitrarily remove you from their platformNo matter what any platform does they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that he addedTwitter on the other hand has lost its status of intermediary platform in India over noncompliance to the new intermediary guidelinesAs a result of the development the company has lost its legal shield in the country from prosecution over postsThe microblogging platform recently said that it has appointed an interim Chief Compliance Officer as per the new norms and the details of which would be soon shared with the IT Ministry directlyThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever