BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Friday dismissed the petition filed by Twitter Inc, challenging the multiple 'blocking orders’ issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, from February 2, 2021, to February 28, 2022. It then imposed an exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh on Twitter.
Justice Krishna S Dixit pronounced the judgment dismissing the petition filed by Twitter in 2022 with cost. "This petition being devoid of merits is liable to be dismissed with exemplary costs. Accordingly, it is. The petitioner is levied with an exemplary cost of Rs 50 lakh payable to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority within 45 days. If the delay is brooked (tolerated), it attracts an additional levy of Rs 5,000 per day", the judge said in the order.
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The orders under sections of the Information Technology Act were issued to block 1,474 accounts/URLs and 175 tweets from being accessed by the public as well as certain information which included suspension of whole accounts on Twitter.
In its petition filed before the high court, Twitter stated that the contents of Twitter accounts and tweets that were ordered to be blocked by the Union government fell under the freedom of speech guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution and did not violate Section 69A of Information Technology Act.
It also highlighted that several originators of tweets were identifiable public figures and that some of the URLs contained political and journalistic content.
Twitter contended that blocking information from public access without issuing notice to the originators was a gross violation of the freedom of speech guaranteed to citizen-users of the Twitter Inc platform.