![MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar](https://img.etimg.com/thumb/msid-100955001,width-650,height-488,imgsize-85140,resizemode-75/mos-it-rajeev-chandrasekhar.jpg)
“This is an outright lie by @jack- perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history. Facts and truth @twitter undr Dorsey n his team were in repeated n continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied,” Chandrasekhar said in a tweet on Tuesday morning.
Late last night India time, in a television interview, Dorsey had said that during the farmers’ protest of 2021, the Indian government had asked it to take down accounts that belonged to farmers, journalists, activists and others critical of the central government.
Dorsey went on to add that the Centre had then told Twitter that if it did not comply with the directions, the platform’s employees would be jailed, and their houses would be raided. Dorsey also claimed that the central government had threatened to shut down Twitter in India.
Responding to Dorsey’s claim, Chandrasekhar on Tuesday said that no Twitter employees were sent to jail nor was the platform shut down.
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Between January and February 2021, the Central government and Twitter had engaged in several rounds of verbal and legal back and forth after the platform had refused to take down some of the content flagged by the ministry of electronics and information technology. The IT ministry had threatened legal action against the platform and said that its orders had to be followed as they had been issued under Section 69 A of the IT Act.
Twitter has since had a change of ownership. Elon Musk, who took over the platform last October, said that his company would comply with local laws rather than risk jail time for its employees.
“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of the country. If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws,” Musk had said in April.