Karnataka HC dismisses Twitter's plea against government, slaps Rs 50 lakh fine

The Karnataka High Court Friday dismissed Twitter's plea challenging the federal government's orders to block tweets and accounts, and imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on the social media giant.

Twitter had challenged ten different 'blocking orders' issued by the Ministry between February 2, 2021 and February 28, 2022. The Government had directed the microblogging site to block 1,474 accounts, 175 tweets, 256 URLs and one hashtag, Twitter had claimed before the court while only challenging the orders pertaining to 39 of these URLs.

Justice Krishna S Dixit said that the social media company did not give reasons for not complying with the government's demands for blocking accounts in a timely manner. The court also noted that Twitter is not a farmer or an ordinary person unfamiliar with the law, but a billionare company.


The court ruled that Twitter was served notices, to which it did not comply, MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said in a tweet.


Twitter had submitted in its petition that blocking orders by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) under the IT Act are demonstrating excessive and disproportionate use of powers. The microblogging platform contended that MeiTY had served a notice warning of serious consequences of non-compliance of blocking orders. The notice has also warned of criminal proceedings and stated that it would be a lost opportunity to comply with orders of blocking accounts.

The decision comes weeks after Twitter's ex-CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the social media in the country unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the handling of farmer protests in 2021, a charge which the government had called a "lie."

The microblogging platform had contended before the High Court in October last year that the central government cannot issue general orders calling for the blocking of social media accounts unless the content is in line with the grounds laid down under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

“There can't be a general blocking order unless the nature of the content is in violation of grounds under 69A. Unless these six grounds are there, you cannot make a blocking order,” senior advocates Arvind Datar and Ashok Haranahalli, who appeared for Twitter, had told Justice Dixit.

The Centre had argued that Twitter, being a foreign platform, cannot seek freedom of speech and other fundamental rights available to Indian citizens for users of the platform.

Timeline of events

The Government issued notices to the Compliance Officer of Twitter on June 4, 2022 and again on June 6, 2022 to appear before it and explain why the Blocking Orders were not carried out and why action should not be initiated against it.

Twitter replied on June 9 that the content against which it had not followed the blocking orders does not seem to be a violation of Section 69A. On June 27, 2022 the Government issued another notice stating Twitter was violating its directions. On June 29, Twitter replied asking the Government to reconsider the direction on the basis of the doctrine of proportionality.

On June 30, 2022 the Government withdrew blocking orders on 10 account-level URLs but gave an additional list of 27 URLs to be blocked. On July one, 10 more accounts were blocked. Compiling the orders "under protest," Twitter approached the HC with the petition challenging the orders.

Justice Dixit had completed hearing the arguments and reserved the judgement on April 21, 2023. The operative portion of the judgement was pronounced in the court on June 30.

(With agency inputs)