Twitter interim resident grievance official resigns

Less than four weeks after being appointed, Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer Dharmendra Chatur quit his post, once again leaving the platform without any executive in the role, according to sources. Twitter declined to comment on the issue, but his name had been removed as resident grievance officer for India from the platform’s website.

Chatur’s appointment had been flagged by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) as being non-compliant with the norms of the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code since he is not on the payroll of the company. In a letter sent to IT Ministry on June 6, Twitter had said that it had appointed a nodal contact person and a resident grievance officer on a contractual basis and was working to recruit people in these positions on a permanent basis. It had then also said that it was in the final stages of appointing a chief compliance officer and would be sharing the details with the Ministry soon.

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Guidelines issued in February required all significant social media intermediaries to designate executives for these roles by May 26.

On May 26, the Ministry had written to these intermediaries asking them to furnish the details of all the appointments made as soon as possible. In a letter, the group coordinator for cyber-law under the Ministry has asked all significant social media intermediaries to furnish these details along with their physical contact address in India and a status report on compliance of these norms.