“Law Of Land Must Be Followed”: Minister On High Court’s Twitter Verdict

New Delhi:

Hailing the Karnataka High Court order dismissing Twitter’s plea against the government, Union Minister for Communications and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the law of the land must be followed.

The Karnataka High Court dismissed a petition, filed by Twitter last year, which challenged several blocking and take-down orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The court ruled that the company’s plea was “devoid of merits”.

The single-judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit, which dictated the operative portion of the judgement, also imposed a whopping cost of Rs 50 lakh on Twitter and ordered it to be paid to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority within 45 days.

“Hon’ble court upholds our stand. Law of the land must be followed,” Mr Vaishnaw tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that allegations levelled by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey against the Indian government were fiction and indicated that the social media platform’s decision to move the court was “part of the fiction”.

“In this particular case, as you remember they (Twitter) were given a large number of directions under the law, which they did not comply with and then when they were sent a legal notice they chose to go to the courts. This is part of the fiction that Mr Dorsey had also put out,” Chandrasekhar told PTI on the sidelines of a Broadband India Forum event.

Mr Dorsey, who had quit as Twitter CEO, claimed that the Indian government “pressured” the company with threats of a shutdown and raids on employees if it did not comply with requests to take down posts and restrict accounts that were critical of the government over the protest by farmers against new agri-laws in 2020 and 2021.

“I am very glad that the court has today laid down very clearly that non-compliance is not an option regardless of where your jurisdiction is, or who you think your owner is. The platforms in India, all platforms big or small, Indian or foreign have to comply with the Indian law and the rules that are enacted under the law,” Mr Chandrasekhar said.

He also said that the government’s relationship with the platforms is not adversarial and Meity only insisted that the laws be followed and laws be complied with. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)