Indian government discards ex-Twitter CEO Dorsey’s ‘shut down & raid’ claims during farmers protest

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekar has rejected the claims made by ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Dorsey claimed that the Indian government put pressure on Twitter to block accounts covering farmers’ protests, calling it an “outright lie”.

The former Twitter boss alleged while speaking on a Youtube show, “Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar” that the Indian government threatened to shut down Twitter in India and raid the houses of the staff.

Dorsey when asked if he had faced any pressure from foreign governments replied, “India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’, ‘we would raid the homes of your employees’, which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit’. And this is India, a democratic country.”

Rajeev Chandrashekar responded to these serious allegations by saying Twitter repeatedly violated Indian Law between 2020-22 and complied only in June 2022 after Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of the social media giant. He alleged that Twitter has a problem digesting the “sovereignty of Indian Law” and behaved as if “the laws of India did not apply to it.”

There was a lot of misinformation being spread on Twitter by miscreants hence the Indian government was “obligated to remove the misinformation from the platform as it had the potential to further accelerate the situation based on fake news.”

Chandrashekar pointed to Twitter’s prompt action in removing misinformation during the US Capitol attack in January 2020 but they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India. “To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail. Our focus was only on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws,” said the Union Minister.