Twitter names US based Jeremy Kessel as India's new grievance officer

Twitter has named US based Jeremy Kessel as its grievance officer for India after Dharmendra Chatur stepped down from the position within days of his appointment. Chatur resigned from his post on last Sunday.

Early this month, Twitter wrote to the government that it was trying to abide by the new guidelines concerning social media companies and had appointed a nodal contractual person and Resident Grievance Officer on a contractual basis and was in advanced stages of finalising the appointment to the role of a chief compliance officer.

Chatur was appointed as interim Grievance Officer for India.

After that, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that it had given Twitter one last notice to comply with the new rules concerning social media companies.

The New Intermediary Guideline Rules is effective from May 26.

In the letter, the ministry said: "The provisions for significant social media intermediaries under the Rules have already come into force on May 26 2021 and it has been more than a week but Twitter has refused to comply with the provisions of these Rules."

"Needless to state, such non-compliance will lead to unintended consequences including Twitter losing exemption from liability as intermediary available under section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. This has clearly been provided under rule 7 of the aforesaid Rules," it added.