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Former TwitterCEO Jack Dorsey, in a stunning allegation, has claimed that the micro-blogging platform had faced government pressure and threats of shutdown during the farmers’ protest. This has evoked a sharp rebuttal from Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has called the claim an “outright lie”.

The Minister of State for IT tweeted that Dorsey’s Twitter regime “had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law”.

“No one went to jail nor was twitter ‘shutdown’,” Chandrasekhar said.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has alleged that, during the farmers’ protest, the Indian government pressurised the microblogging platform and threatened to shut down Twitter in India and raid the homes of employees if it didn’t listen to what was being told.

Chandrasekhar tweeted, “@twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and 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.”

Dorsey’s Twitter regime behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it, Chandrasekhar said.

“India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India,” the minister said.

During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide, which were definitely fake, the minister said, adding that the government was obligated to remove misinformation from the platform as it had the potential to inflame the situation based on fake news.

“Such was the level of partisan behaviour on Twitter under Jack regime, that they had a problem removing misinformation from the platform in India, when they did it themselves when similar events took place in the USA,” Chandrasekhar said.

To set the record straight, no one was raided or sent to jail, and the focus was entirely on ensuring the compliance of Indian laws, he said.

“There is ample evidence now in public domain about Jacks twitter’s arbitrary, blatantly partisan and discriminatory conduct and misuse of its power on its platform during that period,” he said.

“Twitter under Dorsey was not just violating Indian law, but was partisan in how it was using ‘deamplify’ and deplatforming of some arbitrarily in violation of Art 14, 19 of our constitution and also assisting in weaponising of misinformation,” he said.