The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Madras High Court to pass a verdict by April 24 on the TikTok application’s petition against its ban.
A bench headed by the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said if the plea is not decided by then, the order by the High Court imposing a ban on the app will be vacated.
On April 3, the Madras High Court had in an interim order directed the Centre to ban Tiktok app, after concerns were raised about access to pornographic content through it. The court had also restrained the visual and social media from telecasting through the app, noting that children were being exposed to inappropriate material.
The Supreme Court had earlier refused to stay the Madras High Court’s ban order.
On April 16, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court refused to lift the ban on the app and set April 24 the next hearing date.
In compliance with the Madras High Court order, Google and Apple have blocked the download of TikTok from Play Store and App Store respectively in India.
Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, Tiktok app allows users to create short videos and share them.
These user-created videos that often contain memes, lip-syncing songs and sometimes sleazy posts regularly find ways to other popular social media sites including Facebook, WhatsApp and ShareChat.