NEW DELHI: Defending itself against accusation of political bias, social media giant Twitter said it is committed to principles of “openness, transparency, and impartiality” and said it does not review, prioritise, or enforce policies on basis of political ideology.

The statement by the mirco-blogging site came against the backdrop of Twitter India being called before a parliamentary standing committee on information techhnology on February 11 to respond to concerns over fake news and representations that the platform has been pro-active in shutting pro-BJP and right-wing handles.

“Every Tweet and every account is treated impartially. We apply our policies fairly and judiciously for all. If there are “false positive” decisions, these are not political statements of intent; they are the basic human error rate of running the fastest, most open conversational tool in history,” said the statement quoting Colin Cromwell, Global VP-Public Policy, Twitter. Asserting that the platform and its policies are never developed nor evolved on the basis of political ideology, the statement said, “Abuse and hateful conduct comes from accounts across the ideological spectrum and Twitter will continue to take action when its rules are broken”.

Explaining its verification process, Twitter said it is working with Indian political parties to cross-check candidates, elected officials, and relevant party officials whose accounts will be active. “The parties themselves select the accounts for verification...Twitter verifies these accounts to empower healthy election conversations,” the statement said.

