Did not shut down Twitter services: MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said in the Parliament that government authorities had not shut down the services of American microblogging site Twitter and did not raid homes of executives of Twitter for hosting content of farmers' agitation during 2021. This allegation was first made by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a television interview, which was repeatedly denied by Chandrasekhar on his social media handle.

"Directions for blocking under section 69A were issued to block 3,750 Twitter URLs from August 2020 to December 2021. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology neither makes any request for user account data from any platform nor does it maintain such data," Chandrasekhar said in a written response to a question posed by Rajya Sabha member Jayant Chaudhary.

He said that out of the 3,750 URLs, Twitter did not comply with 167 URLs. Therefore, he said the government issued notice to Twitter on June 27, 2022 giving them an opportunity to comply fully.