India continues to favour a self-regulatory body for social media content disputes, an Indian federal minister told Reuters, despite a lack of consensus among Big Tech companies to form a joint appeals panel.

The government on Friday said it would set up an appeals panel amid concerns users had no recourse if they objected to moderation decisions of firms such as Meta, Twitter or Google.

Minister of State for IT and Electronics, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, told Reuters in an interview on Saturday that New Delhi could still consider industry self-regulation as government-led reviews “is not something that we want to spend a lot of time doing”.

He added, however, that such a body “cannot be a cozy club of industry people” and should have consumer and government representation, according to the Reuters report.

Meta, Twitter and Google did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The move is seen as the latest attempt of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration to regulate Big Tech firms through policy changes that have often irked companies who complain about excessive compliance burden.

News of the panel came after New Delhi said in June it could scrap the proposal if the companies themselves banded together to form a self-regulatory body. But they failed to reach a consensus — Google was opposed to external reviews, as Reuters reported in August, while Meta and Twitter favoured self-regulation fearing government overreach.

Decisions about social media content have been a particularly thorny issue in India.

A PTI report stated that Chandrasekhar on Saturday said the modalities defining the structure and scope of Grievance Appellate Committees will be worked out soon, and hoped that their formation will, in fact, discourage social media platforms from continuing with their “casual” and “tokenism” approach to address user grievances.

The government says that the “broken” grievance redressal mechanism currently being offered by intermediaries (read social media platforms) and lakhs of messages flagging users’ concerns around unresolved complaints had forced its hand.

“Grievance Appellate Committee will be an important institution in the coming days for internet and intermediaries. We will make an announcement about its structure, constitution, scope, and terms of reference,” Chandrasekhar told reporters at a briefing.

“It is our fond hope that intermediaries will do a better job of dealing with grievances at their level, so overflow on appellate process will be minimised,” he said asserting that the casual approach adopted by platforms, so far, in dealing with complaints, had necessitated the latest move.

This, despite social media norms of 2021 mandating appointment of grievance redressal officers by social media companies to look at user complaints.

“In good faith we thought that intermediaries, by appointing grievance redressal officers, will understand that grievance redressal officers are supposed to address grievances not have tokenism there…If some people have not understood that…so we are forced to have panels,” the Minister said, according to the PTI report.

As per the amended rules, each grievance appellate committee will consist of a chairperson and two whole-time members appointed by the central government, of which one will be a member ex-officio and two shall be independent members.

“Any person aggrieved by a decision of the grievance officer may prefer an appeal to the grievance appellate committee within a period of thirty days from the date of receipt of communication from the grievance officer,” the amendment to the IT Rules say.

Chandrasekhar emphasised that the new panels – a couple to to start with – will not substitute the civil court system, and its decision can be challenged in the courts.