Barely two days after WhatsApp had approached the Delhi High Court against the traceability provision in the IT Rules, 2021, a petition was filed before the court on Friday against the alleged non-compliance of the rules by the microblogging site.
The plea, filed by lawyer Amit Acharya through advocates Akash Vajpai and Manish Kumar, states that Acharya, on May 26, came across “defamatory, false and untrue” tweets on Twitter made by two verified users and wanted to raise grievance against them before the Resident Grievance Officer under the IT Rules, 2021. The petition alleges that the “objectionable tweets” were made by TMC MP Mahua Moitra and journalist Swati Chaturvedi.
“However, the petitioner was unable to find the contact details of the Resident Grievance on the website of Twitter… for raising his grievance,” the petition read, adding that an email was also sent to Twitter regarding the tweets.
The petitioner has also argued that Twitter has appointed a US resident as the Grievance Officer but the same “is not in true sense implementation of the Rule 4 of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules 2021”.
“The petitioner has a legal and statutory right under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules 2021 to raise objection and complaint against any defamatory, untrue and false tweets or post on Twitter before its Resident Grievance Officer as it is a significant social media intermediary,” the plea read.
