Union Cabinet Ministers Prakash Javadekar and Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday released the guidelines to regulate social media, over the top (OTT) platforms and digital media.

’Social media is welcome to do business in India. We appreciate that they have done exceedingly well and empowered the ordinary Indians,’’ Ravi Shanker Prasad, Minister of IT, said as he began to address the press conference.

"The government welcomes criticism and the right to dissent and social media has been used to ask questions too but it is very important that users of social media must be given a forum to raise their grievances and resolutions against the abuse and misuse of social media,” he added.

According to the new guidelines, social media intermediaries have to appoint an India-based grievance officer, who shall register complaints in 24 hrs and redress them in 15 days.

''A robust grievance mechanism would be built, especially for women who face 'online harassment,'' said Prasad.

The rules also call for tracking the ‘first originator’ of a message. The union minister said that social media companies will have to disclose the ‘who started the mischief.’

"The social media platform will be asked to require to reveal the first originator of the mischievous tweet or message as the case may be and this should only be in the connection to integrity and sovereignty of India," the minister said.