The disagreement between Twitter and the Centre has been going on since January this year when the government asked Twitter to take action against accounts that trended #farmersgenocide during the farmers' tractor rally on Republic Day. As the row escalated, Twitter temporarily removed the 'verified' badge from President Ram Nath Kovind's personal Twitter account and from several accounts of RSS leaders including Mohan Bhagwat's. Then it flagged a tweet of BJP leader Sambit Patra as manipulated media and very recently it blocked IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's Twitter account for an hour over alleged copyright infringement.

 

Parliamentary panel on information technology, headed by Shashi Tharoor, recently met Twitter India's public policy manager Shagufta Kamran and legal counsel Ayushi Kapoor and said that the platform has to follow the rule of the land. The committee will seek an explanation from Twitter for locking out the I-T minister, Shashi Tharoor said adding that the same happened with him as well.

 

Meanwhile, the microblogging platform has lost its intermediary status in India and is now editorially responsible for what users post on the platform. Ghaziabad Police has lodged an FIR against Twitter and a few journalists over an incident that took place in Loni.