Joint Parl Committee grills Twitter on Kamra; row erupts over jurisdiction

Microblogging web site Twitter confronted warmth at a gathering of a joint parliamentary panel on Thursday for not taking down comic Kunal Kamra’s tweet focusing on Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, and was requested to make clear its coverage of blocking and eradicating customers and tweets.

But the proceedings sparked a political tussle with 4 Congress lawmakers suggesting that such points must be dealt by Parliament’s IT Panel headed by Shashi Tharoor. Panel chairperson Meenakshi Lekhi later dismissed the cost.

In the assembly, Twitter coverage head Mahima Kaul confronted a barrage of questions from indignant members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Data Protection Bill when she was summoned for giving “incongruous” written replies to some questions associated to the invoice. The firm, the day before today, submitted a written apology for wrongly exhibiting Ladakh as a part of China.

JPC chairman Lekhi and Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha raised a number of questions, with Lekhi telling the Twitter official that each Tankha and she or he may sue Twitter over Kamra’s tweet though they belong to totally different political events.

The comic’s tweet in query got here after a barrage of tweets the place he criticised the Supreme Court’s beneficial ruling on Arnab Goswami’s bail request.

Lekhi, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, additionally questioned Twitter’s coverage of blocking or eradicating handles and tweets, and gave seven days to submit detailed response on the coverage. “In their submission to the committee they said they follow healthy practices; and that only obscene and profane tweets are blocked. But there is no clear-cut policy on what amounts to profanity or obscenity; their affidavit is not clear on what is the policy is because when we showed them Kunal Kamra’s obscene tweets about the CJI they had no explanation for it,” she stated.

MPs current within the assembly stated it was Tankha who first raised the problem of Kamra’s tweet and stated, it quantities to Twitter ridiculing the nation. “In our country, we cannot allow obscene remarks against anyone. And if Twitter is allowing such obscene remarks against CJI, then it can’t be tolerated,” Tankha stated, in keeping with the MPs who spoke on situation of anonymity.

The MPs quoted above added that the Kamra problem got here up in connection to the affidavit by Twitter as discussions veered on the corporate’s insurance policies on regulating objectionable content material.

According to 2 MPs on the assembly, Twitter didn’t guarantee the panel that the tweet could be eliminated however stated that the problem could be flagged to the suitable officers at Twitter. “We’ve asked for an answer in seven days. Since there are no laws in India regarding these, we have to talk to the top executives of such service providers,” Lekhi stated.

But Lekhi’s order asking Twitter to make clear on its insurance policies led to a political row.

Senior Congress chief and Parliament’s IT panel chief Tharoor tweeted, “Dear @M_Lekhi, as far as I am aware your Committee was formed for consultations on the Data Protection Bill & its mandate is to report on the statutory provisions continued in the draft Bill. Could you clarify if you have taken on additional responsibilities & on whose authority?”

Tharoor’s colleague and member of the JPC, Jairam Ramesh, joined the controversy and tweeted, “I could not attend the meeting today, but had I been there I would have raised this very issue. It is not the first time this has happened. The committee headed by @M_Lekhi has no authority over this issue.” Jairam later advised HT, “We have a hyper-enthusiastic chairperson with wide-ranging concerns and interests.”

Two different Congress MPs, Karti Chidambaram and Saptagiri Ulaka, stated the JPC has no jurisdiction to look into the Kamra problem.

Lekhi hit again on the social gathering. “I won’t run a lot tutorial for Shashi Tharoor when his own party colleague Vivek Tankha has already concurred with me…A member of the IT panel should have better understanding of data protection and algorithm manipulation.”

Later, Tharoor responded: “Seems some people do need “tutorials” on the mandate of particular committees shaped to debate particular payments. This JtCmt is to debate the provisions of a draft information safety invoice&report thereon. Parliament has not been knowledgeable of an enlargement of its mandate past this activity.”

Twitter and Facebook have been summoned for the second time on Thursday by the JPC after they appeared earlier than the panel final month and opposed the proposed information safety legislation, India’s first focused laws to guard private information.

Members of the panel requested how some posts get 4,000 to five,000 “likes” whereas different posts (by the identical particular person) appeal to greater than 100,000 likes — a query associated to a long-held opinion in lots of quarters in India and abroad that such firms amplify some content material and downplay others.

Facebook executives maintained they’re only a platform and never a writer of posts or content material. But Lekhi and Biju Janata Dal MP Bhartruhari Mahtab dismissed this authorized argument and stated Facebook can’t escape accountability on what’s being posted on its platform. Twitter was additionally requested why it took greater than a month to rectify its mistake on Ladakh.