The Centre on Saturday gave Twitter a final chance to appoint India-based officers to comply with the country's new rules for social media companies.
"Twitter Inc. is hereby given one last notice to immediately comply with the Rules, failing which the exemption from liability available under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000 shall stand withdrawn and Twitter shall be liable for consequences as per the IT Act and other penal laws of India," the government said.
It also warned the tech giant that failing to do so will have “consequences”.
The development comes amid an escalating standoff between Twitter and the Government of India.
Earlier today, a new flashpoint emerged following the brief removal of the "blue tick" verification badge from the personal account of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu.
Twitter officials maintain that this was because the account had not been logged into for six months. They said the algorithm does that automatically.
However, government sources described it as “outrageous”.
It signalled a further deterioration of ties between Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Twitter who have clashed over a range of issues including its stand on the new rules for social platforms and the discrediting of certain BJP leaders' tweets.
The government's threat about revoking Twitter's indemnity under Section 79 of the IT Act means that the platform could be held responsible for content posted by users.
Currently, Twitter and other social media platforms, as intermediaries, enjoy the protection that holds users responsible for posts deemed illegal.
Twitter has been battling with the Indian government since February over a slew of issues. India has systematically introduced new rules that aim to make social media firms more accountable for posts that are made on their platform, but the tech giant and several independent bodies see this as a stifling of the freedom of expression.
Besides Twitter, the new IT rules have also spurred a legal challenge from Facebook-owned WhatsApp which said the government was exceeding its legal powers by enacting rules that will force the messaging app to break end-to-end message encryption.
