The Karnataka high court on Monday asked the Union government and social media company Twitter to come back with details about global legal approaches on how online posts are ordered to be blocked.
The direction came as the court continued its hearing in Twitter’s challenge against the government to block 39 accounts, which the social media company has said was done in a manner that did not accord affected users the right to an appeal.
Justice Krishan S Dixit asked both the parties to clarify by Wednesday on how laws of other countries, including the United States of America, deal with giving reasons for why online content is blocked.
“How in other jurisdictions, whether disclosure of reason is treated as a matter of force or whether the government can withhold reasons? Whether any element of state sovereignty is involved in this? For example, a State does not disclose reasons why it refuses visa to you… Secondly, how would US have treated if an Indian entity was before it… that also needs to be examined,” justice Dixit said.
The court questioned both the Centre and Twitter for not sharing or asking the reason for blocking of the 39 Twitter accounts.
As the judge enquired whether Twitter sought the reasons, advocate Manu Kulkarni, representing the company, told the court that besides an order of blocking the accounts, no further reasoning was given in written.
But on a specific query of the court to Twitter’s counsel whether he had solicited reasons for the impugned order from the Centre, he admitted: “It was not done in so many words”.
When the court asked the Centre’s counsel as to why it did not disclose the reasons, advocate Kumar MN said “the reasons are mentioned in the notice that was issued to Twitter”.
To this the court asked: “Court wants to know what is so much an important thing which prevented the government from disclosing the reasons, when the section (69A) uses the word reasons to be recorded?”
Noting that at a time “when the whole world is moving towards transparency”, the judge said: “If it would have been regarding sovereignty etc, we would have understood. You called them for the meeting and you did not agree with the reasons given by them and passed the impugned order, is it not necessary for him to know why you do not agree with his reasons?”
During the hearing, the court also sought to know from Twitter’s counsel whether they can claim fundamental rights under Article 19(1) and Article 21 since they are a foreign entity. To this, Twitter’s counsel told the court that the rights guaranteed under Article 14 would be available to foreign entities and foreigners as well.
The matter will continue for hearing on Wednesday.
