Twitter, a platform that has often been used by the masses to broadcast their own political ideologies, has also been involved with India’s politics for the last few months, being engaged in a tussle with the Indian government for quite some time. However, today it looks like the tables have turned, and instead of its crusade against the current government, the social media platform has taken up arms against the opposition, banning the account of Congress Party from its platform.
Since the last few months, Twitter and the BJP led government have been fighting it out over one issue after another. The brawl first broke out during the farmer’s protests in the country, when Twitter declined to ban some accounts (even though it later agreed to do so) on the government’s request. Then, there was the Congress toolkit fiasco, when the American platform took down a tweet from Sambit Patra, calling it manipulated media. This was followed shortly with a police visit to the company’s offices in Delhi.
The most recent is the new IT laws, where Twitter failed to become compliant till the deadline and ended up losing its immunity in the country for a short while.
Just earlier this week, about 3 months after the deadline, the government noted that Twitter had finally become compliant with the laws of the land, after appointing appropriate leaders as instructed in the IT laws 2021.
Now, just as it looked like things were looking up for Twitter and Indian politics, the company has temporarily banned the accounts of prominent Congress members, as well as the party’s official account. The social media company said that the handle violated its rules.
In response, Congress said,” When our leaders were put in jails, we were not scared then why would we be afraid of closing our Twitter accounts now. We are Congress, this is the message of the people, we will fight, we will keep fighting. If it is a crime to raise our voice to get justice for the rape victim girl, then we will do this crime a hundred times. Jai Hind… Satyamev Jayate.”
It must also be noted that Rahul Gandhi’s account was locked on August7th, and has been locked for 5 days now. This decision was taken after the government complained that he had violated the law by posting a picture of a family of a minor Dalit girl who had been gang-raped and killed.
All the other accounts, including those of general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal, AICC officebearers Ajay Maken, Sushmita Dev and Randeep Surjewala and Lok Sabha MP and AICC Telangana in-charge Manickam Tagore, have been locked for the same reason.
