Owner of social media platform X, Elon Musk, charged the central government with arbitrary censorship through misuse of its Information Technology Act while moving the Karnataka High Court on Thursday to take away the power of the government to issue blocking orders.
In a petition moved in the Karnataka High Court, the X, challenged the use of this section to block content on its social media platform and sought restriction of enforcement of orders from the Sahyog Portal. Basically, what the social media platform wants is that Section 69 A remains the sole statutory mechanism for online content blocking.
Interestingly the petition comes at a time when the Central government has asked for a clarification on responses generated by its AI chatbot, Grok.
The petition alleged that the government was misusing Section 79 (3) (b) of the Information Technology Act for content blocking. It alleged that the government was bypassing the statutory safeguards outlined in Section 69 A to issue blocking orders, which created an arbitrary censorship, and more important was harming its ability to operate in the country.
In its petition, X Corp asserts that the misuse of Section 79(3)(b) infringes on Constitutional rights, specifically Article 14, which guarantees equality before the law, and Article 19(1)(a), which ensures freedom of speech and expression.
Further, the company is seeking a judicial declaration that Section 79(3)(b) does not grant the government authority to issue blocking orders and wants all takedown orders under it invalidated.
Incidentally, the Sanyo Portal, of the Home Ministry, allows police and various government departments to issue takedown requests and in this, it does not follow due process. The result is that thousands of officials issue content takedown requests, without due process, and it is unregulated censorship, the X petition maintained.
The other issue that the X has is the requirement to appoint a nodal office, responsible for compliance with directives coming from Sahyog Portal.
The matter has been posted for further hearing on March 27.