Centre-Twitter spat claims first victim as policy head Mahima Kaul quits

All is fair in love and tweets, someone should have reminded the Indian government. As we enter Valentine's week, the love between the social media giant and the Modi government has soured, with power play and temper tantrums galore. The storm in a 'tweet' cup is spilling over, following the resignation of Twitter's India policy head Mahima Kaul.

'Mahima, please don't go' was the top trend on Twitter in India on Monday evening, with India's extra-vocal Twitter users, running into millions, taking sides.

Kaul is the second high-profile policy head of a social media firm to quit in India following a political controversy. Ankhi Das had quit as public policy head of Facebook just three months ago, after allegations of hate speech blew up in her face. Ironically, while Das was alleged to be pushing right-wing 'hate' content, Kaul's leaving comes in the wake of the Union government threatening to take action against Twitter if it did not follow its request of shutting down over a thousand Twitter handles.

Twitter officially said Kaul will stay on till March, and has started looking for her replacement.

There is a widespread belief that Kaul's sudden exit is linked to the Modi government pressure tactics on the social media site over the two-month-old farmers' protests across India. Tweets by international celebrities, starting with pop star Rihanna, had increased global attention on the agitation and put the belligerent government in a quandary.

Following the January 26 tractor rallies, the government initially asked Twitter to block some 257 Twitter handles (Twitter did, but rolled back the ban after a few hours) and certain inflammatory hashtags as per section 69A of the two-decade old IT Act. Delhi Police had alleged that over 300 fake Twitter handles were created to spread Khalistan separatist messages, and foment law and order issues in the national capital. The government later came back asking Twitter to block another 1,178 accounts, and then threatened reprisal after the American social media giant refused to kow-tow to its diktat.

Twitter told a leading news agency that it withholds access to content (only) after receiving a properly scoped request from an authorised entity. To make matters worse, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey 'liked' comments supporting the farmers' agitation, something that has not gone down well with the current Indian dispensation.

The international tweets in support of the farmers' agitation had specifically brought global attention to the Indian government's frequent internet shutdowns to stifle protests and unrest directed against the administration. Blocking of Internet in and around the protest sites on Delhi's borders, as well as in several districts of Haryana from where support to the agitating farmers was pouring in, has been a regular occurence in the past fortnight. India had the maximum internet blockings ordered by a government anywhere in the world, with the 18-month cutting of 4G services in Kashmir valley—revoked only a couple of days ago—the second-longest of all time (Myanmar's internet shutdown in Rohingya areas beats it by a few days).