Suspension of Twitter account: SC dismisses plea of senior advocate Hegde seeking transfer of case

PTI, Nov 14, 2022, 8:08 PM IST

New Delhi / Bengaluru: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde seeking transfer of his case, challenging the permanent suspension of his Twitter account for allegedly re-tweeting two posts, from the Delhi High Court to the top court.

A bench of Justices M R Shah and Hima Kohli also declined to interfere with his second plea against Karnataka High Court dismissing his plea seeking intervention in the petition filed by Twitter Inc challenging a series of blocking orders issued by the Centre.

”No case for transfer of cases is made out…Transfer petition stands dismissed. We are of the opinion that let there be one decision by one high court so that in future, this court would have advantage of at least one HC judgement,” the bench said. The senior lawyer had approached the Delhi High Court in 2019 seeking directions to the Centre to lay down guidelines under the Information Technology (IT) Act to ensure that censorship on social media is carried out as per the Constitution.

He had filed the plea as his account on Twitter was permanently suspended by the social media company on November 5, 2019, allegedly in connection with two re-tweets by him, and sought restoration of his Twitter account.

The petition had said that before coming to court Hegde had followed the internal appeals procedure of Twitter, but his appeal was rejected. He had also served a legal notice on the social media platform, but no response was received to the same, it said. In its note, Twitter had contended that suspension of Hegde’s account was a contractual dispute and there was no positive obligation on it to provide its service.

The Delhi High Court is currently seized of Hegde’s case and is likely hear the matter on December 19. The Karnataka High Court had October 17, 2022 rejected Hegde’s plea seeking intervention in a case filed by microblogging site Twitter.