In the latest hearing of a writ petition filed by Twitter against blocking orders of the Centre, senior advocate for the government, Mr Shankar Narayanan, called Twitter’s locus standi to argue the fundamental rights of account holders into question. At the Tuesday hearing before Justice Krishna Dixit of the Karnataka High Court, the government counsel used the analogy of a print newspaper against that of Twitter: whereas a print editor might reject a Letter to the Editor in his newspaper for whatever reason, Twitter was an intermediary which facilitated accounts for people to share their views. Based on this he questioned the locus standi of Twitter’s argument that it was highlighting the rights of account holders under Article 19 and Article 21 of the Constitution, and also questioned what the jural relationship between Twitter and its account holders would be, as it was not similar to a situation where a union would defend union members, where certain labour legislation also backed their locus standi. He also noted that Twitter was not carrying out business with the account holders when they used the platform, and thereby Article 19 (g) (right to carry on an occupation) would not be infringed. The earlier argument of Twitter was that Section 69A of the IT Act (Power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource) would have to be read in light of fundamental rights – Articles 14, 19, and 21. The counsel for the government pointed out that the latter two would not be accessible to Twitter, being a corporation and a foreign one at that. Twitter had clarified that their argument was that the rights of the citizens who had Twitter accounts were being affected. With regard to Article 14 (right to equality), the counsel questioned if it could be applied, asserting that there had been no arbitrary treatment of Twitter, as Twitter had not been singled out in this regard. The counsel also brought up Section 79 of the IT Act with regard to Section 69A, pointing out that under Section 79, the intermediary would have to remove access to material on the notification of the government, as otherwise, it might lose its protection from liability under Section 79. In the context of notices being issued by the government, he pointed out that in many cases accounts could be made under false names, or operated by ‘bots’ (computer programs performing an automated task). Throughout the proceeding, the government reiterated that the material that was sought to be blocked was of a nature that could damage the security as well as law and order of India. Twitter had also earlier argued that blanket banning of entire accounts would not be necessary. The government counsel has cited the instance of Twitter permanently suspending Donald Trump’s account based on the risk that it would cause violence in a sensitive situation. The counsel read out a section, “In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.” Three sealed cover documents relating to the case were also opened by the Court with no objection from either party, while further hearing of the matter has been listed for the afternoon of March 6.
