NEW DELHI: Twitter blocked access to Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's account for an hour on Friday alleging violation of US Copyright Act , to which he termed as 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.

Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account.
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) June 25, 2021

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".

"Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account," Prasad tweeted after his account was resumed.

Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account. pic.twitter.com/WspPmor9Su
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) June 25, 2021

This act by Twitter comes at a time when the US digital giant has been having issues with the Indian government over the new social media rules. The government has slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country's new IT rules, which has led to the microblogging platform losing its intermediary status in India and becoming liable for users posting any unlawful content.

Check out his statements here: