TWITTER BLOCKS CONG’S HANDLE, PARTY SLAMS GOVT FOR MOVE

NEW DELHI: Nearly 5,000 Twitter accounts, including those of several senior Congress leaders and the party’s official handle, were temporarily locked on Thursday after they shared a photograph of Rahul Gandhi meeting a minor rape victim’s family in Delhi -- his account was already locked on August 8 -- even as the party mounted an attack on the Union government for scuttling free speech. Twitter, however, maintains that it “impartially” enforces its rules and terms of service.

The party’s social media head Rohan Gupta said, “Twitter is acting under government pressure. It has already blocked 5,000 accounts of our leaders across India”.

NEW DELHI: The Congress alleged on Thursday that the party’s official Twitter handle as well as that of a large number of its leaders and workers have been blocked by the microblogging website, which justified the action saying it has been done for violating rules. The development comes close on the heels of the blocking of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter handle after he shared pictures of the family of a nine-year-old alleged rape-and-murder victim in Delhi last week in violation of laws.

Twitter, on its part, said the blocking of the accounts of several Congress leaders, including that of Gandhi, was done to protect individual privacy and safety after they posted images that violated its rules. The chief spokesperson of the party, Randeep Surjewala, said the Narendra Modi government will not be able to suppress their voice by threatening Twitter.

“How much will you scare Twitter at the behest of the police? This is not just an issue of freedom of speech, but it is the issue of raising the voice of a poor Valmiki Dalit girl for justice and bringing it before the country. Till justice is given to the poor girl, we will continue to raise this voice,” he said. “The Modi government cannot cowardly suppress our voice by threatening Twitter,” Surjewala told reporters.

On Instagram, the Congress said: “Twitter India has locked the official handle of the principal opposition party. This is an unprecedented attack on the voice of the people.” The head of the Congress’s social media department, Rohan Gupta, said the party’s official Twitter handle and around 5,000 accounts of its top leaders and workers have been blocked by the website. “Twitter is clearly acting under government’s pressure as it did not remove the same pictures shared by the Twitter account of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes for a few days,” Gupta said.

The Twitter accounts of All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretaries Surjewala, K C Venugopal, Ajay Maken, the party’s whip in the Lok Sabha Manickam Tagore, Assam in-charge and former Union minister Jitendra Singh and Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev have also been blocked, the party said.

When contacted, a Twitter spokesperson said the company’s rules are enforced judiciously and impartially for everyone in its service.

“We have taken proactive action on several hundred tweets that posted an image that violated our rules and may continue to do so in line with our range of enforcement options. Certain types of private information carry higher risks than others and our aim is always to protect individual privacy and safety,” he said. According to Twitter, if a tweet is found to be in violation of its rules and is not deleted by the account holder, the microblogging platform hides it behind a notice and the account remains locked until the said tweet is removed or the appeal is successfully processed.

The US-based company said it was alerted by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) about specific content on the platform that revealed the identity of an alleged sexual assault victim, who is a minor, and her parents. The said content was reviewed against Twitter’s rules and policies as well as the concerns expressed as a matter of Indian law.