Twitter's interim grievance officer for India quits

Days after his appointment as per the new IT guidelines, Twitter's interim resident grievance officer for India, Dharmendra Chatur has stepped down, sources said.

The US-headquartered micro-blogging platform's website does not show his name, as mandated under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021.

Twitter declined to comment on the matter.

On the website, the grievance officer contact information for users in India is listed as Jeremy Kessel, who is based out of San Francisco, US.

The development comes at a time when the micro-blogging platform is already under pressure to comply with the new norms and has faced severe criticism from the government along with warnings of legal proceedings.

The development comes just after Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was denied access to his Twitter account for almost an hour on Friday over alleged violation of the US' Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Although, he was subsequently allowed to access the account, taking to India-made micro-blogging platform Koo, the minister called the action by the US-headquartered Twitter as "a gross violation of the IT guidelines".

Earlier he had come down hard on the company over non-compliance to the new norms.

Twitter, on the other hand, has lost its status of intermediary platform in India over non-compliance to the new intermediary guidelines.

As a result of the development, the company has lost its legal shield in the country from prosecution over posts.

The micro-blogging 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 directly.