“Are you serious ?” was the question posed to Twitter by the Delhi High Court after the platform replaced the word “interim” with “contingent” in naming its Chief Compliance and Resident Grievance Officer. Demanding a clearer reply in a week, the Delhi High Court noted that it has already given a long rope to the social media giant which is still not in compliance with Indian IT Rules.
The single-judge bench of Justice Rekha Palli termed Twitter’s latest compliance affidavit as “unacceptable”, asking the company to not make things worse for itself by expecting the court to wait forever. Asking the social media giant to comply whole-heartedly with Indian law, the court questioned how the company can write “Will make endeavour to fill position in 8 weeks” for filling up the post of a nodal officer in a country where it earns a huge amount of money every year. The court will hear the case on 6th August.
The court observed that it understands the term “contractual worker” though there’s no mention of the name of the 3rd party contractor; it expressed its objections with the term “contingent worker”, asking if it meant that he was employed on some contingency. Asking Twitter to behave seriously about filling key managerial posts to comply with IT Rules, the court pointed to the affidavit by 31 year old Vinay Prakash. Vinay has been appointed as Twitter’s Chief Compliance Officer and Grievance Officer, and his affidavit has categorically stated that he is not an employee of the company.
Twitter informed the court that it had filed affidavits after the 8th July order, and had informed that the same person was employed as the Chief Compliance Officer and Grievance Officer. Maintaining that it couldn’t designate the same person as “Nodal officer” according to IT Rules, Twitter submitted that the person was appointed on contract.
Appearing for the Centre, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma argued that while Twitter earns millions of dollars in revenue from India, it is merely using nuanced phrases like “interim” and “contingency” to avoid compliance with Indian law. Pointing to IT Rules 2021, he submitted that the Chief Compliance Officer should be a senior employee of the company, while the contingent worker representing Twitter has already held in his affidavit that he isn’t an employee of the company.
