The pressure on social media platforms to ensure online safety and security and maintain basic norms of decency is growing by the day.

The Empower Committee on Women (30 members of women MPs) has also joined the chorus demanding a safer online experience and has asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to ensure the same.

Recently, the Committee held a meeting with senior officials of MeitY in Hyderabad (February 21) in which it appraised them of issues being faced by women on social media and asked for mechanisms to curb such issues, sources close to the development told BusinessLine .

The Committee is chaired by Bijoya Chakravarty with other MPs such as Renuka Butta, Sushmita Dev, Rama Devi, Rita Tarai, Saroj Pandey and Vijila Sathyananth as members.

Online menace

The MPs also asked the MeitY officials to provide an update on what it was doing to ensure the safety and security of women on the social media platforms and on the available mechanisms to control trolls and abuse of women users.

“The MPs have requested the Ministry to prepare a roadmap detailing the measures that the government was taking to regulate social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp and also what the general public can do to check such menace,” a senior government official told BusinessLine .

The MeitY officials assured the committee that the Ministry will work on the concerns expressed.

They also said that MeitY will consult with social media companies and ask for their suggestions to tackle such issues.

It was also pointed out that MeitY has been working closely with many other agencies to check trolls and fake news, but on most occasions, the culprits manage to escape imprisonment as most of the offences are bailable.

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