In a major legal action, social media site X, which is owned by Elon Musk, has moved the Karnataka High Court against the Government of India. The site claims that the Centre’s reliance on the Information Technology (IT) Act to block content threatens its business model and leads to arbitrary censorship.
X argues that the government’s use of Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act is establishing an illegal parallel mechanism for blocking content. The firm asserts this process contravenes the Supreme Court’s 2015 Shreya Singhal judgment, where it laid out that online content could only be blocked through an order by a competent court or through the ordered process described in Section 69A.
Intermediaries, under Section 79(3)(b), are mandated to disable or remove access to illegal content upon getting actual knowledge in the form of a court order or government notification. Inability to do so within 36 hours means forfeiture of the protection under Section 79(1) safe harbour, subjecting the intermediary to legal action under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting re-iterated this in an office order on November 3, 2023.
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X contends that Section 79(3)(b) does not authorize the government to block content in direct terms, claiming that the authorities are abusing this clause to circumvent the safeguards enshrined under Section 69A. The latter provision, as administered under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009, provides for a systematic review process for blocking web content in the name of national security, sovereignty, and public order.
Moreover, X has also objected to the government’s Sahyog portal, which was designed by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to help issue Section 79(3)(b) orders. The platform has characterized this portal as a ‘Censorship Portal’ and maintained that there is no statutory need to onboard an employee or identify a nodal officer for the same. X asserts that it has already appointed officers in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
In a hearing on March 17, Justice M. Nagaprasanna allowed X to come near the court if the government initiated any ‘precipitative action’ against the platform. But the government claimed that no punitive action had been taken against X for not joining the Sahyog portal.
This legal battle represents a serious face-off between a global technology giant and the Indian government, which poses essential questions regarding the extent of online censorship and the limits of digital regulation in the country.
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