Govt comes down heavily on Twitter, says lawful orders binding on any biz

The government expects Twitter to fully comply with its legal notice in the matter of taking down accounts that were tweeting “ince­ndiary” hashtags related to the ongoing farmers’ protests. After a marathon meeting of top Twitter executives with officials in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Wednesday, the government, in a strongly worded statement, said that “lawfully passed orders are binding on any business entity”.

MeitY Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney, while stating that Twitter was welcome to do business in India, expressed strong displeasure to the executives of the American firm over the way it acted after an emergency order was issued to remove the genocide- related hashtag, according to the statement. ‘’Misuse of Twitter’s platform for execution of such campaigns designed to create disharmony and unrest in India is unacceptable and Twitter must take strong action against such well-coordinated campaigns against India,’’ it added.