Samiran Gupta, the head of policy for India and South Asia at social media platform X (owned by Elon Musk), has resigned, Reuters reported on Saturday citing two sources. The departure comes at a time when the company is fighting a court battle with New Delhi over content removal.
Gupta was responsible for key content-related policy issues and "defending Twitter's position with new policy developments and support in-country sales organization", as per his LinkedIn profile.
At X, he was also responsible for collaborating with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and CERT-In, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Ministry of Home Affairs for online content and security matters.
His profile also highlights that he enabled leadership for Twitter post-acquisition by Elon Musk led X-Corp.
Gupta had joined X from Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in February, 2022, eight months before Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc.
There are around 27 million X users in India and key people across the country like Prime Minister Narendra Modi are regular users of the platform.
There are roughly 15 X employees in functions like compliance and engineering in India, one of the sources told Reuters, but Gupta was the only executive engaging with the government and political parties.
It may be noted that X is appealing against an Indian court ruling that it had failed to comply with government orders to remove certain content, arguing it could embolden New Delhi to block more content and broaden the scope for censorship.
India in September told a court X is a "habitual non-compliant platform" and for years has not followed many orders to remove content, undermining the government's role.
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