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.
Besides Rahul Gandhi, the Twitter handles of other Congress leaders like KC Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Rohan Gupta, Pawan Khera, and Manickam Tagore were unlocked after deleting the controversial tweets.
Gandhi’s Twitter handle was locked after the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights filed a complaint citing violation of the law, which prohibits the identification of victims of sexual crimes.
Also read: After Rahul Gandhi, Twitter suspends official account of Mumbai congress committee
“As part of the appeal process, Rahul Gandhi has submitted a copy of the formal consent/authorisation letter to use the referenced image via our India Grievance Channel,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
“We have followed the necessary due diligence process to review the appeal in order to protect the safety and privacy of the affected individuals. We have updated our enforcement action based on the consent provided by the people depicted in the image,” the spokesperson added.
The former Congress chief had made a strong outburst on Friday accusing Twitter of “interfering in the national political process” and said shutting down of his handle amounted to an “attack on the country’s democratic structure”.
Gandhi, in a YouTube video statement titled “Twitter’s dangerous game”, alleged that it was not a neutral and objective platform and was “beholden to the government”.
Questioning Twitter’s action, Gandhi had said the company was denying millions of his followers the right to an opinion, which was unfair.
“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,” Gandhi had alleged.
