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16-09-2023
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI: The Indian government has accused X Corp (formerly known as Twitter) of being a “habitual non-complaint platform” in a recent court filing.
“X-Corp does not follow the law of the land,” the government said, adding that this lowered “the authority of the law, judiciary and executive”.
The document, accessed by the BBC, was filed by the government in response to an appeal by X in a court in the south Indian state of Karnataka.
X has not commented on the filing.
X is appealing against a recent order of the high court which dismissed its challenge to several government orders to block certain accounts and posts. The court had also imposed a fine of 5m rupees ($60,208; £48,450) on X for not complying with several such orders for over a year.
It asked the company to deposit half of the penalty that is 2.5m rupees – and stayed the rest until further orders.
Responding to X’s appeal, in a court filing on 24 August, the government argued that the court should reject the company’s demands. Details around the filing became public when Reuters news agency first reported the story earlier this week.
In the filing, the government said all of its blocking orders were given after following legal processes and in the interest of India’s sovereignty and security. In several instances, the government said, X either did not follow blocking orders for a long period or unblocked accounts and tweets “for reasons unknown” after blocking them
This was deliberate non-compliance and an “abetment to offenses of publishing prohibited content”, according to the government.
It also argued that by filing the petition, X has tried to “exert pressure upon the government” while not complying with its orders. The government also clarified that “while there are millions of users in India and millions of tweets are posted by Indians, the government is not seeking blocking every tweet”.
India has been increasingly asking X to block content. In 2022, it blocked 3,417 Twitter URLs, whereas in 2014, only eight URLs were blocked.
In June, former CEO Jack Dorsey alleged that the government had requested removal of several tweets and accounts linked to the farmers’ protest in 2020.
It was also asked to censor journalists critical of the government, he said. Dorsey alleged that the Indian government had threatened to shut the platform and raid employees’ houses in the country.
The government denied these allegations and accused the company of violating local laws.
