X wrote to Centre against order for blocking 12 accounts: Delhi High Court

New Delhi: X Corp has told the Delhi High Court that it has asked the Centre to review its order to block 12 accounts, terming the action as disproportionate and not in compliance with the law.

It submitted before a bench of Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav that the company has written a letter on March 19 to the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), saying the blocking order issued on March 18 does not meet the requirements laid down under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

The company clarified its position in an affidavit in response to a petition filed by Prateek Sharma, who challenged the validity of the decision of his X account operated as Dr Nimo Yadav.

It said the account was blocked on MeitY’s directions over allegedly controversial and defamatory posts targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including content portraying him as incompetent, which was also in poor taste.

X, however, maintained that the most of the content across the identified accounts did not fall within the grounds specified under Section 69A. It also claimed blocking entire accounts, rather than specific posts, was excessive and failed to meet the legal standard of adopting the “least intrusive measure”.

It also contended that the affected account holders were not given an opportunity to be heard. It further claimed that the blocking order did not demonstrate that reasonable efforts were made to identify the individuals responsible for the content in question.

Maintaining that account-level blocking imposed an undue and permanent restriction on users’ access to the platform in India without due process, the company felt restricting specific posts would have been an equally effective alternative.