All platforms have to comply with Indian law: MoS IT on Twitter ruling

New Delhi, June 30

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday reiterated that all social media platforms have to comply with the law of the land, after the Karnataka High Court dismissed a petition filed by Twitter challenging blocking orders issued by the government.

The court ruled that Twitter's petition was devoid of merit, and also imposed a cost of Rs 50 lakh on the microblogging platform.

“All platforms have to be in compliance with the Indian law and Twitter under Jack Dorsey repeatedly refused to do so,” the Minister said in a tweet.

In response to the government's notice for non-compliance, the micro-blogging platform approached Karnataka High Court.

“Your client (Twitter) was given notices and your client did not comply. Punishment for non-compliance is 7 years imprisonment and unlimited fine. That also did not deter your client,” the Minister posted, citing the court ruling.

“You are not a farmer but a billon dollar company," the bench said while pronouncing the verdict.

Earlier this month, Chandrasekhar hit out at the "fiction" put out by former Twitter CEO Dorsey who had claimed on a YouTube podcast that the Centre had threatened to shut down the platform in the country.

He lashed out at Dorsey for claiming that the Central government conducted raids on employees' homes, saying it was an attempt to "brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history".

"This is an outright lie by @jack -- perhaps an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter's history. Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated and continuous violations of the India law," Chandrasekhar had said in a tweet.

The Minister said that as a matter of fact, Twitter was in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 "and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied".

"All social media intermediaries operating in India have to comply with laws to ensure that the internet is safe, trusted and accountable," he added.