Microblogging platform Twitter on Sunday, 27 June, appointed California-based Jeremy Kessel as its new Grievance Redressal Officer for India, after Dharmendra Chatur resigned from the post.
This development comes amid Twitter's standoff with the Indian government over the compliance with new IT rules which came into effect on 26 May. The rules mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims.
The Quint could independently confirm the resignation of Chatur as grievance redressal officer.
Chatur’s name, as required under the new rules, was earlier displayed on the company’s website, but it is no longer there. Now, the website displays the contact information of Kessel instead.
Who is Jeremy Kessel?
Jeremy Kessel is a senior director of Global Legal Policy at Twitter. According to his Linkedin profile, he has been working with Twitter since 2010.
He started his stint with Twitter as a policy executive back in December 2009, and after three consecutive promotions he was made the Global Policy Director in 2016.
Kessel completed his Bachelors in Arts from University of Colorado in 2003, after which he pursued law at Santa Clara University of Law.
Prior to joining Twitter, he served as a Counselor at Law.com, where he was a firm expert on promoting and continuing legal education (CLE) , and also responsible for all aspects of the firm, such as accreditation and program qualification.
Kessel has also authored several articles on transparency and how tweets are removed from the platform. He wrote how the platform provides transparency into legal requests made by governments to remove a tweet from its social media platform.
Is His Appointment Problematic?
Twitter had appointed Kessel as an interim GRO on 31 May. However, a Delhi High Court advocate Amit Acharya in a petition had claimed that in doing so, the social media platform was in non-compliance with the IT Rules 2021.
Acharya, in his petition, stated that Twitter’s Grievance Redressal Officer (GRO) Jeremy Kessel was based in the United States and that this was a dire violation of the IT Rules 2021, which specifically states that a GRO must be based in India.
Subsequently, Twitter appointed Dharmendra Chatur as the interim GRO, but the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology pointed out that the then-GRO (Chatur) nominated by Twitter Inc was not an employee of the platform and the office address of Twitter India was that of a law firm.
Following the controversy, Chatur resigned from his post. Interestingly, Twitter’s Grievance Officer – India page, now shows that the social media company has re-appointed Kessel as the GRO in India.
It should be noted that this is not in compliance with the IT Rules 2021 which was the main contention in Acharya’s petition against the social media company before the Delhi High Court.
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