Karnataka High Court Reserves Order On Twitter's Plea Against Centre's Account Blocking Orders

The Karnataka High Court on Friday reserved its order on the petition filed by Twitter Inc, challenging the blocking orders issued to it by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. A single judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit reserved the order after hearing both parties. Twitter has claimed that the blocking orders are "procedurally and substantially deficient of the provision" and "demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate".In June, last year, MeitY served Twitter a letter setting out serious consequences of non-compliance, including, of initiating criminal proceedings against Twitter's Chief Compliance Officer, and granted last opportunity to comply with a series of Blocking Orders. Failing to do so would lead to Twitter losing its safe harbor immunity as available to it under Section 79(1) of the IT Act, the MeiTY warned. Following which the microblogging platform approached the court.Twitter asked how it could be directed to block user accounts and muffle their freedom of speech, when news relating to these events were freely circulated by Television and print media."If on my platform 1200 accounts are blocked even when material is appearing in print and TV, then it is causing prejudice," Senior Advocate Arvind Datar had submitted for the microblogging platform.Twitter claimed that if any particular account is against the interests of India, it is the first to act against it. However, when the government wishes to prevent certain accounts, it must follow statutory procedure.Datar had submitted that as per the jurisprudence laid down in the Shreya Singhal case, if Centre finds some tweet objectionable, it has to send a notice to the account holder asking why the tweet should not be pulled down. He had argued that blocking user-accounts would be a violation of freedom of speech. Further, blocking orders demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate. "At the heart of Article 19 is the right to criticise... because we are a democracy," he had submitted.Further, it was argued that the procedure laid down under Section 69 of the Information Technology Act has to be followed. Section 69 gives the Central and State government the power to issue directions for the interception, monitoring, or decryption of any information through any computer resource. He submitted that this Section does not allow for 'wholesale' blocking of accounts.Datar had argued that an objectionable account should be stopped only when it is a chronic/ repeat offender else, it will go against the principle of proportionality, affecting the social networking platform's business.Senior Advocates Datar and Ashok Haranhali appearing for Twitter had further submitted that if content is not falling within the prohibition under Section 69(A), it cannot be blocked. They added that such blocking orders not only affect the rights of the primary user but also the intermediary, Thus, it was their case that intermediaries are entitled to challenge the authority's blocking orders. Advocate Manu Kulkarni for Twitter had in its rejoinder to the reply of the Union Government argued that “Even when Article 19 (1) is not invokable, as a corollary to Article 19 (2) as well, still the concept of reasonableness in Article 19 (incorporated in Section 69A as interpreted by the Apex court in Shreya Singhal case) would avail to his client." Thus the petition before the High Court was maintainable, he had said.A comparison of the rules and compliance mechanisms in the USA, UK and the European Union was submitted before the court to argue that a particular content can be taken down immediately, without notice, only when it is abhorrent. In all other cases, he emphasised, that procedural fairness has to be ensured.Datar had also sought to argue that in India, the blocking orders are of permanent nature. However, on the Court's inquiry if there is any provision for revocation under the Indian laws, Datar conceded that Rule 9 (4) of IT Rules empower the Secretary to revoke the order and an elaborate procedure is available.Further it was submitted that the power of blocking is Tweet-specific & reasons must be disclosed to the user and the intermediary. As regards to the expression 'reasons to be recorded' used in Section 19A and whether such reasons could be accessed at the request of the public, Haranhali had submitted that by not allowing access to the blocking order, the right to examine it and raise objections on the validity is taken away from both the user as well as the intermediary. He had added that the safeguards of the Shreya Singhal judgement could not be met unless the users have the right to examine if the correct procedure has been followed. He added that the order must be made available to both the users and the intermediary, as their rights are at stake.Centre Opposed the Plea: The Central government opposed the petition filed by Twitter...

Karnataka High Court Reserves Order On Twitter's Plea Against Centre's Account Blocking Orders

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