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Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a thread on Koo, a home-grown rival
to Twitter, that the company had denied access on the grounds he
had violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),
subsequently restoring access.
Prasad said Twitter had violated India's new IT rules, which
became effective in May and mandate that an intermediary or a
host of user content must inform a user of the grounds for its
action.
The rules also say that a user must be "provided with an
adequate and reasonable opportunity to dispute the action" taken
by an intermediary.
It was not immediately clear which of Prasad's posts violated
the DMCA.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dispute over the minister's account comes as India's federal
government and Twitter are wrangling over non-compliance with
the new IT rules.
In a separate case, police summoned Twitter's India head Manish
Maheshwari earlier this month for failing to stop the spread of
a video that allegedly incited religious discord. On Thursday, a
court gave Maheshwari relief in that case.
Prasad has previously criticised Twitter over the viral video,
saying its failure to act was "perplexing".
On Friday, Prasad reiterated that all social media firms must
abide by the new IT rules, which also mandate the appointment of
new compliance executives.
"Twitter's actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of
free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in
running their own agenda," Prasad said, adding that users faced
the threat of being "arbitrarily" removed if they did not follow
the company's line.
(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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