Oppn slams Centre over Twitter ex-CEO Dorsey’s claims

Farmers from several states staged protests at the borders of Delhi for over a year from November 2020.

New Delhi: Opposition parties on Tuesday slammed the BJP-led NDA government over former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s claim that it was threatened to shut down its offices or raid homes of its employees.

Veteran leader and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal took to Twitter and slammed the government saying, “Jack Dorsey Ex-Twitter CEO said : BJP government during farmers protests threatened. To shut down Twitter-India offices. Raid homes of Twitter-India employees. Minister (Rajeev Chandrasekhar) denies. Some have no reason to lie. Others every reason to lie.”

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Even Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi hit back at the BJP government and said, “Social media rules quite strict in India, says Elon Musk. The billionaire owner of Twitter said that if it came to choosing between complying with the law and having Twitter employees jailed, he would choose compliance. So everyone screaming about what Dorsey said as incorrect, please sit down.”

She also attached the link to a news report of Musk’s claims.

In another tweet, Chaturvedi said, “‘Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated n continuous violations of India law’ say MoS IT. Lol, Yeah the law they broke was to allow hate speech and rabid BJP agenda. But there was no crackdown or compliance issues since it supported their agenda. The minute people and opposition started to fight back using the platform, the government started to crackdown! So please, spare this little sermon.”

“BTW even Elon Musk has on record spoken about GoI’s multiple requests to take down content or suspend accounts that goes against his own belief regarding absolute FoS (Freedom of Speech). They comply, since GoI (Government of India),” she added.

The remarks of the opposition leaders came after the Dorsey statement during an interview. When asked if he had faced any pressure from foreign governments, Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter’s board last year, 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.”

Farmers from several states staged protests at the borders of Delhi for over a year from November 2020. Prime Minister Narendra Modi admitted the failure in convincing the farmers and appealed to them to call off their year-long protest. In the winter session of Parliament, the three laws were withdrawn.