On Tuesday, Twitter India filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court, challenging certain notices and content takedown orders issued by the Union government, according to people directly aware of the development. The legal action comes after the July 4 deadline for the American microblogging platform to comply with directives issued by the ministry of electronics and information technology expired (MeitY).
According to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the social intermediary approached the courts because it found several of the blocking orders issued by the information technology ministry "overboard and arbitrary, failed to provide notice to the originators of the content," and were "disproportionate in several cases."
They declined to reveal the exact contents of the writ petition filed before the Supreme Court because the case is now pending. “Several blocking orders that were issued only ‘cite’ the grounds of Section 69A (of the Information Technology (IT) Act 2000) but fail to demonstrate how the content falls within those grounds, or how the said content is violative of Section 69A,” said one of the people cited above.
According to an exclusive report by Economic Times on June 29, the IT ministry issued a notice to Twitter, giving it a "last chance" to comply with all notices and takedown orders issued under provisions of the IT Act, or risk losing its intermediary status and, with it, the protection accorded under Section 79 of the IT Act.