NEW DELHI: After Twitter was forced to suspend handles branded “objectionable” by the Union government, the Supreme Court on Friday sought the social media platform’s response to a PIL seeking a direction to the government to frame a legal mechanism to weed out communal, casteist and divisive content freely circulated on the platform.
A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian didn’t require much persuasion to entertain the PIL filed by Vinit Goenka, a member of the governing council of the Centre for Railway Information Systems in the ministry of railways. The bench issued notices to the Centre and Twitter Communications Private Ltd, Mumbai.
Goenka referred to Articles 19 and 20 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and said they imposed similar restrictions on free speech as provided under Article 19(2) of the Indian Constitution, namely protection of others’ reputation, national security, public order, health and public morals. He said Germany in 2017 enacted the Network Enforcement Act to stop hate speeches and advertisements with separatist agenda, seditious material, communal, instigative and divisive messages and decided to penalise any social media platform found circulating banned content.
The petitioner said, “In the absence of any law in India to deal with offensive and hate messages, platforms like Twitter are knowingly promoting such messages. Fake news is the root cause of many riots, including the recent riots in Delhi. Political parties and candidates use fake social media accounts for self-promotion and image building and to tarnish the image of opponents, especially during elections.”
“Terror groups like IS, al-Qaida and Indian Mujahideen use Twitter and other social media platforms to circulate their hate speeches without getting detected,” he said. He added that fake handles were commonly used for circulating divisive and communally disturbing messages. Making a direct attack on Twitter, the petitioner said, “The special commissioner of police (intelligence), Delhi, has issued a statement that over 300 Twitter handles were generated from Pakistan during January 13 to 18 to organise the tractor rally in order to disrupt the Republic Day celebration. Respondent No.4 (Twitter) has not even cared to censor those handles which were the reason for creating unrest.”