Twitter policy on political ad transparency to begin in India from March 11

New Delhi, Feb 19 (IANS) Twitter on Monday announced to expand its political ads policy and transparency approach to include India, all European Union member states and Australia that will be operational from March 11.

Facing the heat in India over the presence of political bias on its platform, Twitter said that from March 11, only certified advertisers will be allowed to run political campaign ads on its service in India.

"Political advertisers must apply now for certification and go through every step of the process," the micro-blogging platform said in a blog post.

"This is part of our overall commitment to protect the health of the public conversation on our service and to provide meaningful context around all political entities who use our advertising products," Twitter added.

The company said it would continue to build the operational and tooling support to expand its political advertising policies to other key markets throughout 2019.

Finding itself in the midst of a controversy for not sending its CEO to appear before a parliamentary panel earlier this month, the microblogging site has said that it is "working hard" to expand its team and resources to help tackle the spread of misinformation on its platform.

Twitter was earlier accused by the government of being "slow" in removing "objectionable content" from its platform.

The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology (IT) wants to question the Twitter CEO over measures taken to ensure the safety and security of the users and allegations that the social media site is discriminating against "nationalist" posts on its platform.

The committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear before it on February 25 but a confirmation is yet to come from the company.