Twitter Revokes Suspension Of Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde's Account

Twitter has restored the account of Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, which was suspended in October 2019. At the time of suspension, his handle @sanjayuvacha had slightly over 90,000 followers.Citing depiction of "hateful imagery", Twitter had blocked Hegde's account in October 2019, for posting the picture of August Landmesser wherein he refused to the Nazi salute at a rally, when everybody around him was doing it; a picture Hegde claims has been up for several months as his cover photo.Following a massive virtual uproar in his favour, Twitter restored his account the next day, only to block it again, this time for sharing the poem titled "Hang Him". Hedge said that the said post dated back to 2017, where he had retweeted the poem posted by Kavita Krishnan, which dealt with the hanging of two peasant revolutionaries in Independent India.Hegde contended that the said posts did not violate any of Twitter's posting norms and refused to take them down. Following that, he filed a writ petition before the Delhi High Court challenging Twitter's action, which is pending on this date. Hegde argued that fundamental rights under Article 19 can be enforced against Twitter and that the microblogging platform is amenable to writ jurisdiction as it was performing a "public function". Opposing the petition, Twitter filed an affidavit in July claiming that its services are subject to certain contractual terms and conditions, which any user has to agree upon for availing the services on the platform. It is alleged that since Hegde failed to comply with such obligations, his user account was suspended.So far as second limb of Hegde's argument regarding activities in furtherance of a Fundamental Right is concerned, the company has submitted, "when operation of a law is attracted by reason of a contract which a person is free to enter into, Article 19 has no application."

Twitter Revokes Suspension Of Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde's Account

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