Those who live, work in India will have to abide by rules: Vaishnaw on Twitter-govt standoff

All those who live and work in India will have to abide by the rules of the country, newly sworn-in Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday on Twitter's standoff with the central government over new IT rules.

Vaishnaw was talking to reporters after meeting BJP general secretary (Organisation) B L Santhosh at the party office here.

Vaishnaw and many other new ministers, including Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mansukh Mandaviya, Darshana Jardosh, Meenakshi Lekhi, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Ajay Mishra, paid floral tributes to party ideologues Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deendayal Upadhyay and also met Santhosh.


To a question that Twitter was not adhering to IT rules, Vaishnaw said whosoever lives and works in India will have to abide by the rules of the country.

US-based company Twitter has been in the eye of a storm over its alleged failure to comply with the new IT rules in India, which mandates, among other requirements, the appointment of three key personnel -- chief compliance officer, nodal officer and grievance officer by social media platforms with over 50 lakh users.

All the three personnel have to be residents in India. While the rules came into effect on May 26, Twitter is yet to adhere to the social media guidelines, despite repeated reminders from the government.

Vaishnaw, a Rajya Sabha member from Odisha, on Wednesday took oath as the Cabinet Minister and was given the charge of Railways along with the Information and Technology Ministry.

He replaced senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad in the IT Ministry.

Vaishnaw said he was thankful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving him the responsibility.

He said his focus will be on improving the life of the last man standing in the queue.

In past, Vaishnaw, while speaking in the Rajya Sabha, had raised the issue of resignation of Karnataka-based Rashmi Samant from the position of Oxford Student Union president in the UK, alleging that she was cyber bullied.

Samant, the first Indian woman to be elected the president of Oxford Student Union (SU), was forced to resign amid controversy over some of her past social media posts earlier this year.