The court listed the petition for hearing on January 10, 2022.
The Delhi High Court on Monday accepted an application by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, seeking an early hearing on his plea. Permanent suspension of his Twitter account Reportedly for re-tweeting two posts.
Justice Rekha Palli said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the microblogging site have no objection if the application for early hearing is allowed.
The court listed the petition for hearing on January 10, 2022.
Mr Hegde in his application stated that the petition has not been listed before the court due to the COVID-19 lockdown announced in March 2020 and thereafter, adjourned for en-block dates. He had prayed for the reactivation of his suspended Twitter account.
The senior lawyer had approached the High Court in 2019, seeking a direction to the Center to issue guidelines under the Information Technology (IT) Act to ensure that censorship on social media is in accordance with the Constitution. .
He had filed the petition as his account on Twitter was permanently suspended by the social media platform on November 5, 2019, allegedly in connection with two re-tweets by him, and sought restoration of his Twitter account. was done.
In July this year, Twitter Inc. has told the High Court That it does not provide public function and “serve the purposes of freedom of speech and expression” was merely incidental to its contractual relationship with users.
In a note submitted to the High Court regarding the suspension of the senior advocate’s account, the microblogging site had said that “services on the Twitter platform is a contractual relationship” and “in its commercial venture, it incidentally also serves the end”. “Freedom of speech and expression will not alter the nature of activity”.
Twitter has responded by claiming that Mr Hegde’s petition was not maintainable.
The US-based firm said its services are covered by the Information Technology Act which has a mechanism for grievance redressal mechanism and Mr Hegde’s Sahara was to file complaints on the portal under the Act.
In its note, Twitter had argued that suspending Mr Hegde’s Twitter account was a contractual dispute and there was no affirmative obligation on him to provide his service.
In his petition filed through advocate Pranjal Kishor, Mr Hegde questioned whether large multi-national corporations like Twitter are liable to constitutional scrutiny for their actions.
According to his petition, the first of the two posts pertained to a tweet by Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML) politburo. ), who posted Gorakh Pandey’s poem.hang them‘ on his Twitter profile.
The petition said Mr Hegde retweeted and shared Krishnan’s post with the title ‘Hang Him’, which is the English translation of the poem’s title.
The second post was a photograph of the August Landmasser which Mr Hegde had been using as his profile header/cover photo for over a year, it said.
It said, “The photo in question was taken on June 13, 1936, and shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Almost everyone in the image raised their hands in a Nazi salute. The only exception is the Landmesser, which Stands at the back of the crowd, his arms crossed over his chest.” The petition said Mr Hegde’s account was suspended for allegedly using two posts, whose original tweets were on No action has been taken.
The petition argued that the suspension of Mr Hegde’s Twitter account is “unlawful, arbitrary and contrary to respondent No. 2 (Twitter)’s own Terms and Conditions of Use” and his rights to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Constitution. also violates
“The arbitrariness of the conduct of respondent no 2 is evident from the fact that the account of the petitioner was suspended for sharing the post/tweet by another user, but no action has been taken against the user who wrote the original tweet. This continues to be in the public domain,” it said and added that no action has been taken against those who later shared the poem and picture on their Twitter profiles.
The petition said Mr Hegde had followed Twitter’s internal appeals process before coming to court, but his appeal was rejected. He had also given a legal notice on social media platform, but did not get any response.
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