Now, Shashi Tharoor claims his Twitter account was temporarily 'locked'

New Delhi: Just hours after Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad reported that he was denied access to his Twitter account temporarily, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor too claimed that his accounted had been locked, briefly.

Taking to Twitter, Tharoor said that he was blocked from his Twitter account for a copyright violation over a video he had posted of a dance performance featuring the popular song ‘Rasputin’.

Raviji, the same thing just happened to me. Clearly DMCA is getting hyperactive. This tweet has been deleted by @Twitter because its video includes the copyrighted BoneyM song"Rasputin": https://t.co/ClgP2OKV1o #DanceIsNotJihad pic.twitter.com/IqQD50WhaU
After process, a/c unlocked. https://t.co/TCeT8aGxV6 — Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 25, 2021

The Congress MP didn’t blame Twitter for the action but rather in a toungue-in-cheek fashion said "the complainant was the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry which is zealously defending the rights of Sony Music." He added that he was a keynote speaker at their last conference in India.

Tharoor also said that as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, he will seek an explanation from the microblogging site for their action against his and Prasad’s accounts.

Earlier, the Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed that he was denied access to his Twitter handle for almost an hour on grounds "that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA."

He said that he was not informed before his account was blocked though his acces was subsequently restored.   

Ravi Shankar said this action by Twitter is in violation of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 in which he did not tell them before denying access to the account. He also accused Twitter of running their agenda.