Twitter briefly removes blue tick from Venkaiah Naidu's profile

New Delhi : Twitter on Saturday courted yet another controversy as it briefly removed the blue tick or "verified" badge from Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu's account.

However, the blue tick was restored within a few hours, reportedly after the company noted objections raised by the Vice President's office. It has been learned that the Ministry of Electronics and IT will be issuing a notice to Twitter asking why this was done without "prior intimation". 

The verified status had been removed from @MVenkaiahNaidu for "inactivity", said Twitter. "The referenced account has been inactive since July 2020. As explained in the Twitter verification policy, Twitter may remove the blue verified badge and verified status if the account becomes inactive or is incomplete. The verified badge of the Vice President's account has now been restored," it said in a statement.

"Inactivity is based on logging in. To keep the account active, the account holder must make sure to log in at least every 6 months."

The last tweet from Mr Naidu's account was on July 23, 2020.

The explanation from Twitter was countered by the government sources, who claimed that the accounts of former Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj had stayed verified long after their death in 2019.

"The Vice President is above politics. It is a constitutional post. Can Twitter do the same with American leaders in constitutional posts," IT ministry sources questioned.

The whole thing becomes more controversial because Twitter has been mute on complying with India's new IT policy. The government today issued a final warning to Twitter to comply with the new policies or face consequnces.