New Delhi: Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has filed a petition in the Karnataka High Court, contesting the Indian government’s use of Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act to block content.
The company argues that this provision not only establishes an illegal parallel content-blocking process but also violates the Supreme Court’s 2015 Shreya Singhal judgment, which mandates that content can only be blocked through a court order or under Section 69A’s structured process. X claims the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is unlawfully encouraging officials to issue takedown notices, bypassing safeguards and creating a “censorship portal” on its platform, Sahyog.
The petition highlights that Section 79(3)(b) imposes significant censorship and lacks procedural clarity, rendering it unconstitutional. At a hearing on March 17, Justice M Nagaprasanna allowed X to amend its plea.
This marks X’s ongoing legal battle against India’s content-blocking regime, following a similar challenge to Section 69A in 2022.
