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News Desk: Twitter today restored Rahul Gandhi’s account, along with that of the Congress and its other leaders, a week after it was temporarily suspended for tweeting pictures of the family of a nine-year-old victim of alleged rape and murder in Northwest Delhi. The move came a day after he lashed out at the microblogging site.
“All Congress accounts have been unlocked. No reason has been given by Twitter for the unlocking,” Rohan Gupta, the Congress in-charge of social media accounts said.
The party also clarified that it had not deleted its Twitter account.
A spokesperson for Twitter said Mr Gandhi had submitted a copy of the formal consent or authorisation letter to use the specific image. The company had followed the due diligence process to review the appeal “in order to protect the safety and privacy of the affected individuals”, the official said.
“The Tweet is now withheld in India and the account access has been restored. As explained in our Country Withheld Policy, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in accordance with valid legal provisions under the Indian law(s),” said the Twitter spokesperson.
“The withholding actions are limited to the specific jurisdiction/country where the content is determined to be unlawful and remains available elsewhere.”
In response to Twitter’s temporary locking of his account, Mr Gandhi yesterday accused it of “interfering in the national political process” and said shutting down of his handle amounted to an “attack on the country’s democratic structure”.
In a YouTube video statement titled “Twitter’s dangerous game”, he alleged that the microblogging site was not a neutral and objective platform and was “beholden to the government”.
Questioning Twitter’s temporary locking of his handle, he said millions of his followers were unfairly denied the right to an opinion.
“It’s obvious now that Twitter is actually not a neutral, objective platform. It is a biased platform. It’s something that listens to what the government of the day says,” he alleged.
In the wake of the friction with the Congress, Twitter has transferred its India head Manish Maheshwari, against whom an FIR was registered in Uttar Pradesh in connection with a probe related to a video of an alleged hate crime, to the US.
While the company did not specify any reason for the change, it said Maheshwari will move to the US as Senior Director (Revenue Strategy and Operations) and focus on new markets in his new role.
