In objections, the Center said, “The Petitioner has deliberately remained in non-compliance and defiance of the laws of the land. Only after carefully following the Respondent No. The Petitioner for reasons best known to him, suddenly implemented all the instructions of the blockade.”
Twitter has defied many blocking guidelines given to it, including 39 URLs. Twitter in its petition in June had claimed that freedom of speech is affected by government takedown notices. Content creators on its platform were not noticed before their content was required to be removed.
However, the government in its objections has said that since Twitter was the intermediary, it was its responsibility to inform users.
The government has also said that Twitter has no role to play in the country’s security.
“When a public order issue arises, it is the government that is responsible for taking action, not the platforms. Therefore, whether the content will cause national security or public order issues or not should not be allowed to be determined by the platforms.” the Center declared.
On claims that political tweets were asked to be removed, the government has stated that it had only asked to block unverified accounts.
The Center has stated that any privacy policies or rules made by online platforms are subject to the Information Technology Act 2000. “Foreign platforms providing services in the country have no right to claim that Indian laws and regulations are not applicable to them. such a claim is legally unsupported,” she said.
The opposition has also called for the petition to be dismissed as Twitter is not entitled to seek relief as it is not a citizen of India.
“Article 21 rights are not available to artificial legal entities, much less to any foreign commercial entity. “, it was said in opposition.
The government has said it is its responsibility to protect over 84 crore Indians who use the internet from anti-India propaganda, fake news and hate speech content.
“These contents have the potential to endanger the peace of the country. Thus, it becomes essential to detect and block these disinformation and fake news contents at the initial stage to prevent a situation like public order catastrophe in the country,” the opposition said. .
