Popular microblogging site Twitter has released its first India Transparency Report as well as a Resident Grievance Officer, Vinay Prakash to comply with the country’s new IT rules. The announcement comes after the social media platform found itself in a legal battle with the IT ministry over India’s new IT rules.

The platform has provided the contact details of the resident grievance officer along with steps the user can follow to report potential violations of its rules and terms.

After the new IT rules went into force earlier in May, Twitter appointed Dharmendra Chatur as its interim resident grievance officer for India, who, however, resigned just weeks after taking over the top job.

Jeremy Kessel, who is based in California, was initially named as India's grievance redressal officer, even though his appointment did not meet the requirements of IT rules. These guidelines require key officers such as the chief compliance officer, grievance officer, and the nodal officer to be Indian residents.

Twitter did not provide any further information on the new resident grievance officer.

In its India Transparency Report of July 2021: User Grievances and Proactive Monitoring report, Twitter stated that it acknowledged 94 grievances and actioned 133 URLs between 26th May and 25th June 2021.

Twitter also confirmed to have suspended 18,385 accounts on the grounds of Non-Consensual Nudity, Child Sexual Exploitation, and related content in a different category called 'Proactive Monitoring Data,' while terminating 4,179 accounts for Promotion of Terrorism.

More countries are enacting similar regulations for tech companies operating in their territory. For instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin mandated foreign social media firms to build offices in Russia. The new rules apply to any social media company with a daily user base of 500,000 individuals or more.

Other social media platforms such as Telegram, Google, and Facebook have already appointed local compliance officers in India.

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