New Delhi, Dec 17: The Delhi High Court has closed the proceedings in a plea by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde against the suspension of his “X” account in 2019 and said any action against him by the platform will be under the statutory rules and guidelines.
In an order passed on December 11, Justice Tara V Ganju noted the petitioner’s account on “X”, formerly Twitter, was restored and the Centre had introduced the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
Hegde moved the high court in 2019 and sought directions to the Centre to formulate guidelines to ensure that censorship on social media was carried out in accordance with the Constitution.
The plea came after his account was permanently suspended by Twitter on November 5, 2019, over two retweets, and he sought restoration of the same.
During the last hearing, the counsel for the platform said the account was restored in 2023 and the plea was therefore infructuous.
The petitioner’s counsel said the suspension was without any prior notice or objection over the use of a famous anti-nazi picture on his profile and it was restored only after filing of the plea.
It was further said that even today the same allegedly objectionable picture was reflected and there was no assurance that the account would not be suspended again.
The Centre’s counsel said “X” was required to comply with the IT Rules 2021, and other related applicable laws prior to taking any steps.
“The writ petition is disposed of with the directions that no action shall be taken against the petitioner by respondent number 2, except in accordance with the law and applicable statutory rules and guidelines,” the court ordered.
Twitter previously claimed that Hegde’s petition was not maintainable. According to the petition, the first of the two posts pertained to a tweet by Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association and member of the politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML), who had posted Gorakh Pandey’s poem “Unko phaansi de do” on her social media profile.
Hegde re-tweeted and shared Krishnan’s post with the caption “hang him”, an English translation of the poem’s title, the petition said.
The second post was a picture of August Landmesser which Hegde was using as his profile header/cover photo for over a year, it said.
“The photograph in question was taken on June 13, 1936, and shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm Voss shipyard in Hamburg. Almost everyone in the image has raised arm in the Nazi salute. The only exception is Landmesser, who stands toward the back of the crowd, with his arms crossed over his chest,” the plea said. (PTI)
