Centre mulls mandatory verification of social media accounts

The Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar has informed that the Centre's objective is to ensure open, safe & trusted and accountable internet for its users.

The Government is aware of the risk and danger posed by growing phenomena of misinformation, bots, criminality and users' harm in general. Therefore, there will be mandatory verification of social media accounts, said Chandrasekhar in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

"To ensure Open, Safe & Trusted and Accountable internet for its users, the Government has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules 2021”). As per rule 4(7) of the said Rules, the significant social media intermediaries shall enable users to voluntarily verify their accounts and such users’ accounts shall be provided with visible marks of verification," he said.

The Minister further said that Common Services Centres (CSCs) were set up under the Digital India Programme for the delivery of public services, including cyber services, to every citizen. The CSC scheme envisages setting up of at least one CSC in each of 2.50 lakh Gram Panchayats (GPs) across the country, for delivery of various Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and other citizen-centric e-Services to citizens. It is a self-sustainable entrepreneurship model which is run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs), he informed.

As on June 2022, a total of 5,31,203 CSCs are operational across all states & Union Territories of the country, out of which, 4,20,198 CSCs are operational at the GP level.

"CSC 2.0 Project has the mandate to establish at least 1 CSC to cover 2.5 lakhs Gram Panchayats (GPs) across the country by March 2024. As on 30 June 2022, 4,20,198 CSCs are functional at the Gram Panchayat level, he informed the Rajya Sabha.