Karnataka HC Rejects Twitter's Plea Against Centre's Account Blocking Orders

The Karnataka High Court on Friday rejected Twitter's plea against the Centre's orders to block certain social media accounts and tweets.

The court also imposed a cost of Rs 50 lakh on Twitter Inc and said that the social media company had approached the court without complying with government orders.

Reading the operative portion, the HC said, "In the above circumstances this petition being devoid of merits is liable to be dismissed with exemplary costs and accordingly it is. Petitioner is levied with an exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh payable to the Karnataka State Legal Service Authority, Bengaluru, within 45 days. If delay is brooked, it attracts an additional levy of Rs 5,000 per day."

"I am convinced with contention of the Centre that they have powers to block tweets and block accounts," the judge said while dismissing Twitter's petition.

Last year, Twitter had challenged the various takedown orders of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The Centre had asked Twitter to block several social media accounts and tweets between February 2021 and February 2022. Out of these, Twitter had challenged 39 blocking orders.

The company claimed that it was barred from even informing its account holders about the takedown.

The HC order comes weeks after Twitter's ex-CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey accused the government of threatening to shut down the social media in India unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the handling of farmer protests in 2021.

In a YouTube Show 'Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar', Jack Dorsey claimed that Twitter had received many requests from India to block accounts covering farmers' protests and those critical of the government.

During the interview, Dorsey said, "India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government, and it manifested in ways such as 'we will shut Twitter down in India'... 'we would raid the homes of your employees', which they did; 'we will shut down your offices if you don't follow suit'. And this is India, a democratic country."

However, Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar strongly denied Dorsey's allegation of receiving many requests from India to censor reporting on farmers' protests, as well as threats of shutting down the platform.