NEW DELHI: A day after rebuking social media platform Twitter for failing to comply with its order to remove objectionable tweets and accounts, the government took a stern stand and said that the social media companies will have to abide by the laws of the land, else strict action will be taken against them.

Replying to a supplementary questions in the Rajya Sabha today, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MEIT) Ravi Shankar Prasad said that, although the Government respects freedom of expression on social media but if it is used to spread misinformation and to incite violence or if it attempts to influence the elections, the Government will not hesitate to take strict actions against them

Prasad said that while the government value freedom of speech and criticism also because it is an integral part of our democracy, but freedom of expression is not absolute and it is subject to reasonable restrictions.

On February 4, the government had recently issued orders to Twitter to directing it to remove 1,178 accounts and Tweets using hashtag related to ‘farmer genocide’ and accounts supported by Khalistan sympathizers and backed by Pakistan and blog post.

However in the following few days while Twitter said it had only partially complied with the orders by permanently suspending over 500 accounts, and it reduced the visibility of hashtags containing harmful content, it had restored access to some content that was temporarily taken down earlier in the month.

In a statement issued on February 10 Twitter said that the action was taken, "in a manner that we believe was consistent with Indian law," and in "keeping with our principles of defending protected speech and freedom of expression.”

On Wednesday, Ms. Monique Meche, Vice President Global Public Policy and Mr. Jim Baker Deputy General Counsel and Vice President Legal had a virtual meeting with MEIT secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney to explain their point of view, however Sawhney made it clear that while Twitter was free to formulate its own rules and policies, however Indian laws which are enacted by the Parliament must be followed.

Sawhney also reminded Twitter about the action taken by it during the Capitol Hill episode in the United States of America on January 6 after which Twitter had eventually banned the then US President Donald Trump from the platform for inciting violence and compared that with the disturbance in Red Fort in India and its aftermath.

Twitter CFO Ned Segal was quoted on Wednesday that Twitter’s ban on Trump is permanent, even if he were to run for office again. “Our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence,” Segal reportedly said to a news channel.

Twitter has about 17.5 million users in India, and is extensively used by several celebrities and politicians’ including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and most of his Cabinet ministers who have millions of followers and use the platform to express their views with the public.