Government notifies GACs to address complaints against social media companies

3 Grievances Appellate Committees (GACs) will be made to address complaints against social media companies as the government notifies on Sunday.

The reason behind establishing the GACs is to strengthen the cyber rules in India. Moreover, to solve the issues that users may have against social media companies initially address their complaints regarding their content or account usage.

The Junior Minister for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrashekhar had said that compliance with the rules and regulations was not a “pick-and-choose” or “cherry-picking” option for the platform, as per the notification of the IT Rules.

He also pointed out that if the rules regarding IT fails, “the safe harbor protection” will also fall.

The notification was released by the government at midnight Sunday. The same was notified in October 2022 for setting up government GACs. Three committees will be made and each of the three will have a chairperson and two whole-time members from government entities and retired entities for three years from the date of the charge of the office.

The Chief Executive officer of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the home ministry will chair the first panel, while the whole-time executive will be retired IPS officer Ashutosh Shukla and Punjab National Bank’s (PNB) former chief general manager and chief information officer Sunil Soni.

Meanwhile, the second panel will be chaired by the policy and administration division in the ministry of information and broadcasting a joint secretary in charge. And its whole-time members will include former vice-president (consulting), L&T Infotech Kavindra Sharma and Indian navy’s retired commodore Sunil Kumar Gupta.

Correspondingly, the third panel will be chaired by Kavita Bhatia, a senior scientist at the ministry of electronics and information technology and former traffic service officer of the Indian railways, Sanjay Goel and former managing director and chief executive officer of IDBI Intech, Krishnagiri Ragothamarao as the whole-time members of the panel.