The Supreme Court on Thursday, December 17, issued a notice on a plea filed by Twitter Communications India Pvt Ltd seeking quashing of FIRs registered against the company for allegedly promoting a tweet by lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannum on ‘Khalistan’.
The FIRs were launched after Pannum tweeted a Twitter poll on ‘whether India should recognize Khalistan 2020’, the company claimed.
The plea mentions that the national co-convener of the BJP IT cell, Vinit Goenka, and other complainants alleged that Twitter had taken financial consideration to promote Pannum’s tweet, whereas Twitter had blocked the tweet and suspended his account, Bar & Bench reported.
Twitter has also alleged that Goenka and his supporters have held webinars asking for Twitter to be declared a ‘terrorist organisation’, for its officers to be charged with sedition and to promote mass filing of cases against the company and its employees.
‘The allegations levelled by Goenka and his supports are baseless, unfounded and actuated by malice,’ the petitioner mentioned. He also said it has no role in determining Twitter’s Ad policy and that it does not collect revenue for the content promoted on the platform.
Twitter India said that it does not have control over the content on the Twitter website and that the website is monitored by Twitter Inc, which is based in the United States. Twitter Communications also said that only looks into research, marketing, development and promoting brands.
Citing the example of Arnab Goswami’s case where the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution had ordered such consolidation when there were multiple FIRs, Twitter India has now demanded the consolidation of all FIRs filed against it. The petitioner also states that all the complaints, filed across eight states mention similar allegations.
The petitioner has stated Goenka had motivated users to file cases against the Indian entity with the aim of threatening, harassing and intimidating Twitter India.
