Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: November 4, 2022 at 21:15 IST
On Friday, the Delhi High Court denied a motion to charge Elon Musk in a case contesting the suspension of a Twitter account along with Rs. 25,000 in costs.
The application was denied by Justice Yashwant Varma, who described it as “thoroughly misconceived.”
There is no reason for the motion to be made, the court ruled, and it is rejected with costs of Rs. 25,000.
“The application is totally misconceived. It cannot possibly be argued that the corporate body (Twitter) already stands represented,” the court stated.
The decision was made in response to an application filed in a current case by Dimple Kaul, who claimed that her account had been suspended without affording her a hearing.
During the hearing, Kaul’s attorney, Raghav Awasthi, stated that he had been given the go-ahead to pursue the move for Musk’s impeachment. He maintained that Musk is not only the only Director of Twitter, but that he also owns stock in the company.
“Are you serious about pursuing this application”, Justice Varma questioned Awasthi at the beginning of the hearing. The attorney gave a positive response.
It has been asserted in the case submitted through attorney Mukesh Sharma that Musk “has a totally different view” on free speech, holding that such communication “should not be restrained by Twitter as long as it does not infringe the legislation of the country in issue.”
The software relied heavily on Musk’s tweets.
The plea further claims that Twitter Inc. (Respondent No. 2) was transferred to Mr. Elon Musk’s private ownership on October 27, 2012, and that shares of the company are not currently traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
In response to Kaul’s petition, the Centre had previously filed an affidavit stating that Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs) are required to notify the user in advance before taking any action regarding the account and that failure to do so may constitute a violation of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2021.
It was further argued that, in accordance with Rule 4(8) of the IT Rules, 2021, if the intermediary platform falls under the Significant Social Media Intermediary (SSMI) category, it must notify users beforehand and provide an explanation of the action being taken as well as the justifications for it.
The platform may only take the extreme action of removing all information or suspending the entire account in situations where the majority of the contents, posts, or tweets on a user account are illegal, the Centre had stated.
The high court is currently hearing a number of appeals contesting the micro blogging platform’s decision to permanently suspend user accounts.