Twitter wings of Ravi Shankar Prasad and Shashi Tharoor clipped

New Delhi: Hours after Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad was reportedly denied access to his own Twitter account temporarily on Friday, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said his account had faced similar action.

Tharoor said that, unlike Prasad's case, he was blocked from his Twitter account for a copyright violation over a video he had posted of a dance performance featured the song 'Rasputin'.

"In this case, the complainant was the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (@IFPI_org) which is zealously defending the rights of @sonymusic to "Rasputin". Ironically, at their last conference in India, I was a keynote speaker! #SMH," he tweeted cheekily adding that he "didn't blame Twitter for the action or attribute the motives to them that @rsprasad (Ravi Shankar Prasad) does, though it wasn't pleasant finding my account locked. Clearly, they had no choice but to honour a DMCA takedown notice, however stupid & pointless the request was."

Tharoor added 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, Prasad said he was denied access to his own account for almost an hour. Though the Twitter account of the Minister was visible for public viewing, Twitter did not permit anyone authorized to access this account to log in or make any post. Twitter blocked the IT Minister's account for alleged violation of the US Copyright Act, a move that the minister slammed as being arbitrary and gross violation of IT rules.

Hitting out at Twitter, Prasad in a series of posts on another social media platform Koo said that Twitter's action is in gross violation of IT rules, as the platform had failed to give prior notice before denying access to his account.

The account was subsequently unblocked after a warning. Confronting Twitter, Prasad said it was apparent that his statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of the microblogging platform, particularly sharing clips of interviews to TV channels and the powerful impact had "clearly ruffled its feathers". Twitter and the government have been at loggerheads over multiple instances in the past months, including during the farmers' protest and later when the microblogging platform tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as "manipulated media", triggering a sharp rebuke from the Centre. Tharoor's panel had last week summoned Twitter officials over issues related to misuse of the platform and protection of citizens' rights.