The Indian government on Saturday sent out a "last notice" to Twitter urging it to immediately comply with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 and warned that failure to do so would lead the platform to lose exemption from liability under the IT Act. A note was written in this regard by Rakesh Maheshwari, the Group Coordinator in the Cyber Law Division in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). MediaNama has verified the veracity of this letter from MEITY sources and an RTI has been filed to obtain a public copy. In the letter addressed to Twitter's deputy general counsel Jim Baker, Maheshwari said that the refusal to comply with the rules that came into force on May 26 will lead to "unintended consequences" such as Twitter losing exemption from liability as an intermediary available under Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 — this would essentially make Twitter liable for what people say on its platform. The Indian government said that MEITY had sent letters in this regard on May 26 and May 28, but Twitter's responses dated May 28 and June 2 "neither addressed the clarifications sought by the Ministry nor indicate full compliance with the rules". Maheshwari sought to remind Twitter that it has been more than a week since the rules were enforced and that this notice was a "gesture of goodwill". This development follows days after Twitter was dragged to the Delhi High Court for…
