In the ongoing crackdown of hateful content on social networking sites, the Indian government on Wednesday directed Twitter to remove the unlawful and morphed material within 12 hours.
The decision came one day after the Home Ministry sent a request to Twitter to remove 28 pages containing inflammatory content about Assam violence, for which the micro-blogging site complied. However, Twitter failed to provide information to the IT ministry as requested.
"If Twitter fails to respond to our request, we will take appropriate action. We have asked the information technology ministry to serve them (the US-based site) a notice," said Home Secretary R K Singh.
The government is planning to issue legal and technical action against Twitter if it fails to respond within the deadline. "One of the options before them is to take help of the US which has some kind of legal arrangement with Twitter as its server is located in that country," an official told The Times of India.
Earlier, Twitter had promised to look into the parody accounts following a complaint from the Prime Minister's Office. On Wednesday, the government blocked six Twitter accounts, which satirized the Prime Minister's Office account, through the Cyber Security Cell after it failed to get any response from Twitter.
"India is important to us and we would like to have clearer communication in these matters in future," Twitter said adding that it is now reviewing the unlawful content following the government's request.
According to reports twitter also informed PMO that delay in action was due to the failure in issuing a notification about the parody accounts through right procedures.
The government has already blocked over 250 websites identified to have a hand in spreading incorrect information and doctored pictures indicating the repercussions of the Assam violence. Among all the websites informed about the decision to block the inflammatory content, only Twitter has failed to comply with the government's notice.
