Bengaluru: The Union government on Tuesday told the Karnataka high court that X, formerly known as Twitter, complies with takedown laws globally but seeks special treatment in India, as it opposed the social media giant’s petition against the Centre’s Sahyog portal.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, told a bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna that X must join the Sahyog platform and comply with all takedown notices issued by designated authorities.
“In every other country, they follow the law. Only in India they expect these luxuries,” Mehta argued.
X has challenged the Union government’s direction asking it to join Sahyog, contending that the portal opens the door for “indiscriminate censorship.”
Senior advocate KG Raghavan, appearing for the social media company, cited a recent case where the Indian Railways asked X to remove a viral video of a woman driving on railway tracks in Telangana. The video had gone viral after the police revealed that the woman was attempting suicide.
Questioning how such content was unlawful, Raghavan claimed that under Sahyog portal, “every Tom, Dick, and Harry” could issue takedown notices.
{{/usCountry}}Questioning how such content was unlawful, Raghavan claimed that under Sahyog portal, “every Tom, Dick, and Harry” could issue takedown notices.
{{/usCountry}}Mehta, however, objected to Raghavan’s choice of words and said the officers sending such notices were the competent authority and the Union government will not tolerate anyone calling them names. Justice Nagaprasanna asked the senior counsel to exercise restraint, saying these were officers of the “government of India” and had “statutory powers.”
The Centre also reiterated that X has no legal right to challenge takedown orders. The government had previously told the court in an affidavit that social media intermediaries did not have the locus to fight for their users in court. It had also cautioned that if X resisted, it might lose safe harbour.
Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, provides a safe harbour provision for intermediaries, such as X, shielding them from liability for third-party or user content they host or transmit, provided they comply with takedown requests within 36 hours of receiving official notice.
X has argued that this provision has been misused to create a parallel blocking mechanism that violates the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, which provides for orders for content removal only under a defined process established under the IT Act.
The high court posted the matter on July 8 for further hearing.