The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has asked Twitter for the reasons to lock profiles of Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor temporarily on June 26.
Sources privy to the development said that the parliamentary panel asked the Lok Sabha Secretariat to seek Twitter’s response in writing on this within 48 hours. Also, the matter was reportedly discussed during the panel’s meeting today which has summoned representatives of Facebook and Google.
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On Saturday, as per the sources, Twitter’s decision to temporarily lock Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account, the committee members asked Facebook if it too could take a similar step. To this, Facebook reportedly replied that it does not have any such policy.
Previously, Twitter temporarily locked Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s personal account over an alleged violation of US copyright laws.
Twitter said in a statement, “We can confirm that the Honourable Minister’s account access was temporarily restricted due to a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice only and the referenced tweet has been withheld.”
Hitting out at Twitter, Ravi Shankar Prasad termed the action “arbitrary” and a “gross violation of India’s IT rules” as Twitter had failed to give him the prior notice.
