Twitter vs India: Karnataka HC dismisses plea challenging govt, imposes a fine of Rs 50 lakh

Twitter vs Indian government case took a fresh turn today when the Karnataka High Court dismissed the social media giant’s plea challenging the government’s orders to block tweets and accounts in the country. Furthermore, the High Court imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakhs on the company.

According to a report by Reuters, the Karnataka High Court ruled that Twitter was served notices, to which it did not comply. “So you have not given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year of delay… then all of sudden you comply and approach the court,” the bench said during the verdict, Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar wrote in a tweet.

“You are not a farmer but a billon dollar company,” he added.

“All platforms have to be in compliance with the Indian law and Twitter under Jack Dorsey repeatedly refused to do so,” the Minister wrote in the tweet.

All platforms hv to be in compliance with Indian law n @Twitter under @jack repeatedly refused to do so. In response to @GoI_MeitY ‘s notice for non-compliance they approached Karnataka High Court n judgement 👇🏻

✅Karnataka High Court has dismissed the petition filed by…

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) June 30, 2023

It is worth noting that earlier this month, the Union Minister shared a wordy post on Twitter wherein he called out the “fiction” put out by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a YouTube podcast recently claimed that the Centre had threatened to shut down the platform in the country.

“This is an outright lie by @jack — perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter’s history. Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of the India law,” Chandrasekhar had said in a tweet at the time.

This is an outright lie by @jack – perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of twitters history

Facts and truth@twitter undr Dorsey n his team were in repeated n continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law… https://t.co/SlzmTcS3Fa

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar 🇮🇳 (@Rajeev_GoI) June 13, 2023

The Minister also said that as a matter of fact, Twitter was in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 “and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied”.

“All social media intermediaries operating in India have to comply with laws to ensure that the internet is safe, trusted and accountable,” he added.

— With agency inputs