Micro-blogging platform Twitter has once again shown a distorted map of India on its website. The map shows Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh detached from the country. The distorted map appears on the ‘Tweep Life’ section and shows Jammu & Kashmir as a separate county and Ladakh as a part of China. This is not the first time that when Twitter has shown the wrong map of India. Earlier in October 2020, Twitter had labelled the Indian territory of Leh in Ladakh as part of the People’s Republic of China.
Twitter, which is already under pressure to comply with the new norms in India, has faced severe criticism from the government along with warnings of legal proceedings for non-compliance in recent times. Twitter and the Centre have been at loggerheads over several issues for the last few months. Just yesterday, Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer for India, Dharmendra Chatur stepped down days after he was appointed as per the new IT guidelines.
The new IT rules which came into effect on May 25 mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims. Meanwhile, Twitter has appointed California-based Jeremy Kessel as the new Grievance Officer for India. Kessel is the Global Legal Policy Director of Twitter. The appointment of Kessel is not in line with new IT rules. The new IT guidelines mandate that all nodal officials, including the grievance redressal officer, should be based in India.