Follow law of the land, Parliamentary panel tells Twitter

India's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information technology came out hard on Twitter on Friday asking the social media platform to follow the law of the land instead of dilly-dallying. The social media platform has not fully implemented the new IT rules that were announced in February.

The Parliamentary panel comprising of 21 MPs from Lok Sabha, and 10 from Rajya Sabha is led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Sources said the MPs cutting across party lines were "unanimous" in their call asking Twitter to comply with the new IT rules.

Today’s meeting of the committee was attended by Congress MP Dr Shashi Tharoor, along with MP Mahua Moitra from TMC, Nishikant Dubey and Rajyavardhan Rathor from the BJP among others.

Twitter representatives were seen as vague when the committee asked whether their company rules are important or the laws of India are important and tried to equate them. Sources pointed out that this was "not viewed positively" by the committee which "firmly told Twitter to follow the Indian laws."

The development comes even as Twitter has lost its intermediary status in the country over non-compliance of IT rules. This means it will be liable for third-party content or tweets on its platform.

The meet started at 4 pm(IST) at the committee room, Parliament house annexe.

The main agenda which was listed for the meet was to hear the views of representatives of Twitter on the subject "safeguarding citizens rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space".