Karnataka High Court: The Karnataka High Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by Twitter Inc in which the company challenged the order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to remove and block content. Along with this, the court said that there is no basis for the company’s petition.
Court imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh
A single bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit also imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the Twitter company and ordered it to be deposited with the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority within 45 days. In the aforesaid circumstances, this petition being without merit, is liable to be dismissed with exemplary cost and it is done accordingly, the court said while reading out the main part of the judgement. A fine of Rs.50 lakh is imposed on the petitioner, which is payable within 45 days to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority, Bengaluru. If it is delayed then it will attract an additional charge of Rs 5000 per day.
Rejecting Twitter’s plea, the court said…
Dismissing Twitter’s plea, the judge said, “I agree with the Centre’s contention that they have the power to block tweets and ban accounts.” According to Twitter’s Global Transparency Report released in 2022, between January 2022 and June 2022, India was at number four among the countries which legally issued instructions to remove the maximum number of Twitter posts. During this, Twitter received 43 thousand 387 notices to remove content from all over the world. Through them, action was asked on 1 lakh 96 thousand 878 accounts and posts related to them.
