Parl panel to seek explanation from Twitter on blocking of accounts: Shashi Tharoor

New Delhi: After Twitter temporarily denoted access to the accounts of Union Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday, citing copyright violations, the latter said that he would seek an explanation from the microblogging platform for its actions.

"As Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, I can state that we will be seeking an explanation from @TwitterIndia for the locking of @rsprasad's & my accounts & the rules & procedures they follow while operating in India," Tharoor said in a tweet.

Ravi Shankar Prasad was denied access to his Twitter account for almost an hour over alleged violation of the US' Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Soon, the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor also confirmed that his account too was locked out by the microblogging site.

"And @Twitter locked me out again because to explain the problem, the first tweet in this thread included the offending copyrighted video. Locking is a foolish response to a DCMA notice; disabling the video (which they've now done) should be enough. @Twitter has a lot to learn." Tharoor said in an earlier tweet on Friday.

Meanwhile, Prasad took it to Koo, the India-made micro-blogging platform, to explain his stand.

"Twitter's actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account," Prasad said.

"It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers" added Prasad, who has been at the forefront of the government's drive to bring in more compliance and stricter norms for social media platforms.

"No matter what any platform does, they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that," Prasad clarified.