A parliamentary panel called executives from Twitter India and Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) on Friday to hear their opinions on issues relating to the privacy and security of individuals' personal data.

The CEOs will be heard for 30 minutes by the standing committee on communications and information technology, which is expected to be presided over by Congressman Shashi Tharoor.

The summons comes a day after news broke that Twitter's former head of security, Peiter Zatko, said that the social media company deceived US authorities and the board of directors of the microblogging network about its defense against hackers, bots, and spam.

In his complaint to US federal authorities, including the Federal Trade Commission, Zatko, also known as ‘Mudge’, said that the Indian government had pushed Twitter to keep one of its agents on the payroll who had access to user data even throughout the protests against the current government.

The Washington Post broke the news of Zatko's complaint to the FTC and the US Congress. In July, the complaint was filed with the authorities.

Additionally, Zatko claimed in his lawsuit that he had informed his coworkers that half of the company's servers were using outdated and vulnerable software.

He went on to say that Twitter executives presented directors with rosy charts demonstrating insignificant changes rather than the sobering statistics concerning the amount of breaches and the lack of protection for user data.

Based on the meeting notice published by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the panel has also contacted representatives of the IRCTC with the same concern regarding the security and privacy of citizens' data.

The IRCTC has released a tender to employ a consultant to monetize its passenger and freight customer data in order to generate revenue up to Rs. 1,000 crore. The IRCTC has over 10 crore customers, of which 7.5 crore are active consumers.

The Railways have not made any formal remarks regarding the tender. High-ranking sources, however, claimed that it will be revoked in light of the government's withdrawal of the Data Protection Bill from Parliament.

The long-awaited Personal Data Protection (PDP) Draft, 2019, was withdrawn by the Center on August 3 in favor of a new bill with a "comprehensive framework" and "current digital privacy legislation."

The IRCTC procurement document states that the data to be examined will include facts like ‘name, age, contact number, gender, address, e-mail ID, class of voyage, payment option, log in or password’ and other information that is collected by the transporter's different public-facing services.