Twitter removes, restores blue tick from Mohan Bhagwat, Venkaiah Naidu's handles

New Delhi: Almost after 18 hours of removing the blue tick from the account handles of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat and others, the social media giant backtracked and has now restored the 'blue tick' status. Twitter had removed the blue tick verification from a bunch of handles on Saturday of Bhagwat and other leaders from the organisation.

Twitter has over the past several days removed the blue tick verfication from the accounts of many RSS leaders whose handles were verified by the social media platform back in 2019. The list includes prominent Sangh leaders including Gopal Krishna, Arun Kumar, and former leaders Suresh Soni and Suresh B Joshi.

RSS leader Rajiv Tuli confirmed the development to ANI. "Twitter has withdrawn verification marks from the accounts of many RSS functionaries. We tried to contact Twitter in this regard but no one responded," he said.

Earlier in the day, the microblogging site kicked up a storm when it removed the verification of Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu's personal account only to restore it later. 

The social media platform cited that the account had been inactive since July 2020 and according to Twitter verification policy, it may remove the blue verified badge and verified status if the account becomes inactive or is incomplete.

The blue tick on Twitter account is to let people know that the social media account is authentic. It said to receive the blue tick, the person`s account must be authentic, notable, and active.

Meanwhile, the Centre on Saturday gave a final notice to Twitter for compliance with new IT rules. In the official letter shared by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), the Centre noted that Twitter has not informed about the details of the Chief Compliance Officer as required under the Rules.

The Centre also gave a warning to Twitter, saying that non-compliance will lead to unintended consequences including Twitter losing exemption from liability under section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000.  

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