Ex Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Claims Pressure From India Over Policy, Slammed By Union Minister

The government today vehemently rebutted Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's allegation of receiving "many requests" from India to censor accounts critical of the government and reporting on farmers' protests, as well as threats of shutting down the platform.

Union IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar blasted the comment as an "outright lie by Jack Dorsey" and an attempt to redact a "dubious period of Twitter's history".

In an interview on the YouTube channel 'Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar' on Monday, Jack Dorsey was asked if he had faced any pressure from foreign governments.

The statement of Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar came after Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO, in an exploratory remark, has claimed that India had put pressure on the micro-blogging platform, including giving threats of winding it down and conducting raids on employees’ homes. In an interview with a YouTuber, Jack said, "We would raid the homes of your employees’, which they did; We will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit. And this is India, a democratic country."

However, on behalf of the Indian Government, Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State in charge of IT, said the Twitter founder's comments were "fiction" and that the company had "weaponised misinformation" against Indians and the government. He said, "The government of India has consistently maintained that any platform, whether foreign or India, whether small or big, must comply with Indian laws if they are to operate in India."

In a long post on Twitter, Rajeev Chandasekhar said on Jack Dorsey's watch, the platform was in "repeated and continuous violation of Indian law" and that the "Dorsey Twitter regime had a problem accepting the sovereignty of Indian law."