The reasons for blocking of contents or accounts can be withheld from being communicated to the persons or organisations against whom blocking orders are issued only when the larger public interest outweighs making the reasons known to the affected, microblogging platform Twitter contended before the High Court of Karnataka on Thursday.
These submissions were made before Justice Krishna S. Dixit during the hearing of Twitter’s petition questioning the legality of various blocking orders passed by the designated authority, which had ordered Twitter to either block the tweets or the accounts.
On disclosure
When Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, specifically states that the reasons for blocking have to be recorded in writing, there is no meaning in not disclosing or communicating the recorded reasons to the affected, contended Senior Advocate Ashok Haranahalli, while continuing arguments on behalf of Twitter. Even though the reasons are not disclosed to the affected ones due to larger public interest, they have to be disclosed to the courts, he argued.
It was also pointed out on behalf of Twitter that one of the reasons the apex court had upheld the constitutional validity of Section 69A in Shreya Singhal’s case was that the law provides for “reasons to be recorded in writing in such blocking order so that they may be assailed in a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.”
Not communicating the reasons for blocking may lead to a possibility of the creation of reasons at a later stage by the authorities concerned when blocking orders are challenged before the courts, Mr. Haranahalli argued.
Permitted to withdraw
Meanwhile, the court “reluctantly permitted” Aakar Patel, Chair of Amnesty International India, to withdraw his application seeking the court’s permission to be part of Twitter’s petition against blocking orders.
Earlier, the court orally indicated to Mr. Patel’s advocate that it would impose a cost for wasting the judicial time of the court while questioning how a third party can seek to join a private litigation between the two parties.
Pointing out that it had already rejected a similar application filed by a senior advocate from New Delhi, the court orally indicated that it would reject the application by imposing an exemplary cost to deter others from wasting the court’s time by filling such applications in future.
When the court orally indicated that the cost would not be less than ₹25 lakh, Mr. Patel’s advocate sought permission to withdraw the application. Mr. Patel had referred to an instance of blocking of his Twitter account from being accessed in India for two days during June 2020.
