BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday stayed the order passed by a single judge imposing an exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh on X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, while dismissing the latter's petition against the multiple blocking orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, subject to a deposit of Rs 25 lakh in the court within a week.
While dismissing Twitter's petition on June 30, the single judge had said that the petitioner is levied with an exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh, payable to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority, within 45 days, and a delay would attract an additional levy of Rs 5,000 per day.
Hearing the appeal mainly on the cost imposed, a division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice MGS Kamal passed the interim order staying the cost imposed by the single judge, subject to deposit of Rs 25 lakh in the court until the next hearing.
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Noting that X Corp has demonstrably adopted a tactical approach to delay compliance with the central government's blocking orders that shows its intent to remain non-compliant with Indian law, the single judge had dismissed the latter's petition questioning certain blocking orders by imposing the exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh.
Before the single judge, X Corp had challenged the orders issued to block 39 URLs among a series of orders issued under the Section 69A of the I-T Act between February 2021 and February 2022 to block 1,474 accounts/URLs and 175 tweets from being accessed by the public, besides certain information which included suspension of whole accounts on Twitter. The blocking orders were issued from February 2, 2021, to February 28, 2022.