The Union government on Thursday said a petition by Twitter Inc. before the High Court of Karnataka, questioning content and account ‘blocking orders’, is ‘not maintainable’, as it is a foreign company and therefore has no right to allege a violation of fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution.
In a detailed statement of objection submitted to the Court, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has said that Twitter, being a mere ‘social media intermediary’, has no right or locus to take up the case of its users against any orders, passed by the competent authority under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Pointing out that Twitter does not have any place of business in India and the affidavit was filed by a foreign national, who is acting on its behalf of it, the Ministry has contended that the rights, under Article 32 and 226, are not available to it, for the purpose of challenging ‘blocking orders’ passed by the Union of India, against users using the platform of the company, which is a mere ‘foreign artificial juristic entity.”
“The petitioner, behind the administrative façade set up in the present petition, in pith and substance, is seeking to defend Article 19 (1) (a) rights [freedom of speech and expression] of its users,” the Ministry has argued, while contended that “the petition is thus nothing but a chance or luxury litigation, where the jurisdiction of this Court is invoked surreptitiously to achieve an object indirectly when the same could not be achieved directly”.
‘Unverified accounts’
Stating that the persons whose accounts were ordered to be blocked are not before the Court, the Ministry has pointed out, “The accounts blocked by the Union of India are interalia unverified accounts. There is no evidence available as to whether the said accounts are operated by citizens of India or are fake, anonymous or bots”.
“A fortiori the petitioner cannot defend the Article 19 rights of its unverified, untraceable and anonymous users. The said right is only available to an identified citizen of the country,” the Ministry made it clear.
‘Habitual non-compliant’
Describing Twitter as ‘habitual non-compliant’ of ‘block orders’ issued under Section 69A of the IT Act for several years, the Ministry has said that compliance was done belatedly after issuance of notice.
“Twitter purposefully delayed in complying blocking orders to ensure that blocking directions lose its value and the content become more vital, and also spread to other platforms also, resulting in an increase in threat to sovereignty and integrity, national security and public order issues eventually, causing risks to the citizens and the country,” the Ministry has alleged.
Stating that whether the content would cause national security or public order issues or not, should not be allowed to be determined by the platforms, the Ministry said that “when a public order issue arises, it is the government that is responsible to take action and not the platform.”
Twitter did not issue notices
On the contention of Twitter that no notices were issued to the affected users before issuing ‘blocking orders’, the Ministry has alleged that Twitter itself had not issued notices to several of its Indian users before blocking their accounts as per its own policy.
The Ministry has also contended that notice before ‘blocking orders’ had to be given only to an identified citizen and intermediaries like Twitter had the obligation to notify its user or provide their data to the designated authority prior to blocking.
