The Bengaluru bench of Karnataka High Court dismissed the writ petition against the issuance of blocking orders under section 69A of the Information Technology Act,2000 on the ground of the non-violative doctrine of proportionality.
X Corp, the petitioner was a Company Incorporated under the laws of the United States of America challenging certain blocking orders issued by the respondents, whereby it was directed to bar access of certain information to the public, by effecting suspension of some accounts on Twitter.
The counsel for the petitioner contended that the blocking orders suffer from the lack of jurisdiction under section 69A of the Information Technology Act does not authorize the government to direct the intermediary to block the entire account.
It was further submitted that the power to block under section 69A(1) of the Information Technology Act read with website blocking rules was not tweet-specific but extends to user accounts in their entirety.
Further states that the orders at least to the extent of blocking the accounts in their entirety, fall foul of the doctrine of proportionality and therefore, are liable to be invalidated.
The counsel for the respondent relied on the blocking orders passed by the respondents and contended that no sufficient empirical data supports the argument of abuse of power which is structurally exercised and no provision in the Act nor in the Website Blocking Rules was pointed out to show that the respondents are under a legal duty to consider the request for review of the Blocking Orders.
The Court observed that the impugned orders blocking the tweets/accounts for an indefinite period are unassailable on the doctrine of proportionality.
A single-member bench comprising Krishna S Dixit held that the petition was devoid of merits and is liable to be dismissed with exemplary costs.
Subscribe Taxscan Premium to view the JudgmentSupport our journalism by subscribing to Taxscan premium. Follow us on Telegram for quick updates
