On the ground that it is "devoid of merits," the Karnataka High Court of India has dismissed a petition filed by Twitter challenging the federal government's orders to block tweets and accounts.
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The Twitter logo is seen on the exterior of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California, on October 28, 2022.
Twitter Penalized With Over $60,000 Fine By India
A lawyer for Twitter told Reuters that the court also imposed on Friday a fine of 5 million rupees ($60,943.65) on the company that must be paid within 45 days to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority.
The court also said that 5,000 rupees ($60.90) would have to be paid every day the payment is delayed. The court has cited Twitter's conduct of approaching the court without complying with the government's orders first.
India's Deputy Minister for Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said Twitter was given several notices. However, it still failed to comply despite knowing the punishment for non-compliance was seven years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
"That also did not deter your client... 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. You are not a farmer but a billion dollar company," the bench said during the verdict on Friday.
In the petition filed by Twitter last year, the company said some removal orders fell short of the procedural requirements of India's Information Technology Act, which allows the government to block public access to content in the interest of national security, among other reasons.
Twitter also alleged that the government had abused its power by ordering the company to "arbitrarily and disproportionately" remove some tweets from its platform, including those political content posted by political parties.
Twitter Complying With the Requests
TechCrunch reported that Twitter partially complied with the government's requests but sought to fight many of its orders.
Twitter had reportedly challenged 10 different "blocking orders" issued by India's Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology from February 2, 2021, to February 28, 2022.
Under India's IT rules that went into effect in 2021, Twitter had limited or no scope to challenge these legal orders individually.
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Twitter's Relationship With India
Some of the government's block orders happened before Elon Musk acquired the platform last October for $44 billion. Musk reportedly has a cozier relationship with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Twitter owner previously said that Twitter's lawsuit against India was one of the reasons why he wanted to halt the acquisition deal.
Friday's verdict follows Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey accusing India earlier this month of regularly issuing requests for the social media platform to remove some posts and accounts, often accompanied by threats of legal repercussions in cases of non-compliance.
Engadget reported that the relationship of Twitter with India has been rough since 2021. In February 2021, the government threatened the company to jail employees unless the company removed content related to protests by farmers held that year.
After that, the government also ordered to pull out tweets criticizing them in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In one of its recent events, Twitter was also ordered to block tweets from the non-profit organization Freedom House after claiming that India was the perfect example of a country where freedom of the press continues to decline.
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