According to the government’s arguments presented to the Karnataka High Court, the social media behemoth Twitter “deliberately” remains non-compliant & disobedient to the laws of the nation and plays no role in the country’s security.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) filed a 101-page declaration of objections in response to a petition filed by the microblogging platform challenging government removal & blocking orders.
The Centre denied Twitter’s claims that it had requested the removal of political messages by saying that it had instead requested that only unverified accounts be blocked.
“The petitioner deliberately remained non-compliant and defiant to the laws of the land. Only on the diligent follow up of the respondent No.2 (Centre) and upon the issuance of show cause notice dated 27.06.2022 the petitioner for reasons best known to it suddenly complied with all the blocking directions,” said the Centre while seeking for dismissal of the petition.
In sum, Twitter has blocked 39 URLs. On September 8, there will be a hearing about the case.
Twitter has claimed in its petition that government takedown notices violate free speech. It claimed that no cautions were given to content creators on its platform before they were asked to withdraw their work.
While the government acknowledged Twitter’s role as a middleman, it argued that it was Twitter’s responsibility to alert its users. “When a public order issue arises, it is the government that is responsible to take action and not the platform. Hence, whether content will cause national security or public order issues or not should not be allowed to be determined by the platforms.”
In its report, the Centre claimed that the Information Technology Act of 2000 pertains to any laws or private policies created using online platforms.
It also said, “Foreign platforms providing services in the country shall not be entitled to claim that the Indian laws and rules are not applicable upon them. Any such claim is legally untenable”.
