Delhi High Court seeks status report from Centre on K N Govindacharya's plea

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court today sought a status report from the Centre on a plea by former BJP leader K N Govindacharya seeking a direction to the Centre to safeguard the interests of Indians who do business through the internet.

A bench of justices B D Ahmed and Siddharth Mridul directed the Centre's standing counsel Sumeet Pushkarna to file a status report by the next date of hearing and disposed of the application.

"A status report shall be filed by the Centre before the next date of hearing. The application is disposed of," the court said.

The court rejected the plea to initiate contempt proceedings against the Secretary, Information and Technology Ministry, for "failure to comply with the provision to place grievance officers".

"There is no contempt of the court's order. The Centre's counsel has ensured that there is no failure on the part of compliance by intermediaries.

"We are satisfied that there is compliance by Google Inc as well as Facebook Inc with the provisions of Information Technology. There is no further need to change the rules," the bench held.

The application, filed through lawyer Virag Gupta, had sought a direction to Facebook Inc to "modify the grievance mechanism by making the specific provision for redressal of grievances/complaints to be authenticated through digital signatures."