Logo of X.
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Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday posted X Corp’s petition for final hearing to April 24, with the consent of the parties that an interim order would not be necessary. At the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the union government, made it clear that any entity that is operating in India is bound by the Indian law.
“The ultimate conclusion of the entire scheme of things is that the petitioner is an intermediary. It is like a notice board in a village. One can post some good quotations, someone else may post some abuse and someone may post some defamatory material,” he said.
The Solicitor General further requested the court to consider the matter for final hearing by stating that in the meanwhile, ‘nothing will happen and nothing can happen’. “As of now nothing has happened. We can intimate them (X) that this is illegal (certain posts). In the meanwhile, nothing will happen and nothing can happen,” he said.
Earlier, senior advocate KG Raghvan, appearing for the X Corp, submitted that there is no intention of violating any law. However, the exemption granted by the statute under section 79 (1), safe harbor, is taken away without following the safeguard under section 69A of the Information Technology Act. “The central government is authorizing every officer, it could be Station House Officer (SHO), tax officer, village accountant to issue orders under section 79 (3) (b). There is a notification which says a tax recovery officer is empowered to issue a blocking order under 79 (3) (b). Tomorrow it can be a tahsildar, the day after tomorrow it can be a clerk,” Raghvan said.
He further said that section 79(3)(b) cannot be read as a standalone provision having regard to the enunciation of the law by the Apex Court in the Shreya Singhal case that section 79 (3) (b) should be read in consonance with safeguards in section 69A. Raghavan said that there are two separate sets of Rules, one blocking Rules of 2009 and the second Ethics Guidelines Rules ie; Information Technology (intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011. The 2021 Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules superseded the 2011 Intermediary Guidelines, he said, adding that the scope of the Act cannot be expanded by a rule.
“Under Section 69A, the mechanism is different. Nodal officer has to write to the designated officer, the designated officer then has to take the opinion of the committee. Thereafter, they have to follow the procedure, come back to the nodal officer. And then there is a provision for review. You cannot interplay between Sections 69A and 79(3)(b) as Section 79 (3) (b) gives unbridled power to decide what is unlawful irrespective of what is contained in Section 69A, independent of the procedural safeguards in Section 69A is unchanged,” Raghavan said.