A day after its interim officer in India quit, Twitter has appointed global Legal Policy Director Jeremy Kessel as grievance officer for the country. The appointment comes at a time when the microblogging company is in muddy waters with the Indian government over various issues, including its compliance to the new IT rules.
The new appointment, however, is not seen to be in line with new IT rules guidelines, which mandate that the grievance redressal officer should be a resident of India. Kessel is based in California.
Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer for India, Dharmendra Chatur, quit on Sunday, leaving the micro-blogging site without an official to address complaints from Indian subscribers.
The development comes at a time when the micro-blogging platform has been engaged in a tussle with the Indian government over the new social media rules. The government has slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country's new IT rules.
The new rules which came into effect from May 25 mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims.
All significant social media companies, with over 50 lakh user base shall appoint a grievance officer to deal with such complaints and share the name and contact details of such officers.
The big social media companies are mandated to appoint a chief compliance officer, a Nodal Contact Person and a resident grievance officer. All of them should be resident in India.
Twitter in response to the final notice issued by the government on June 5 had said it intends to comply with the new IT rules and will share details of the chief compliance officer. In the meantime, the microblogging platform had appointed Chatur as interim resident grievance officer for India.
Twitter now displays the company's name in the place of grievance officer for India with a US address and an email ID.
According to a government official, the company has lost legal protection as an intermediary and will be legally held responsible for all content posted by its users on the platform.
