The Centre has asked the Supreme Court to transfer to itself cases pending in various High Courts challenging the validity of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules of 2021.
The High Courts, including Delhi, Bombay, Madras and Kerala, are hearing the petitions against the new IT Rules.
The Delhi High Court is hearing the case concerning Twitter.
Recently, the government informed the Delhi High Court that micro-blogging site Twitter had failed to comply with the law regulating tech companies rendering their services as ‘intermediaries’.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), in an affidavit, said despite three months being granted to all Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs) to comply with the Rules, Twitter has failed to fully comply with the same.
Last week, Twitter informed the court that the interim Resident Grievance Officer and the interim Nodal Contact Person had resigned from their positions in June.
The tech giant had said it was in the final stages of appointing a replacement. Meanwhile, “the grievances of Indian users are being addressed by the Grievance Officer”.
On September 24, 2019, hearing a petition filed by Facebook, the apex court had shown deep concern at the utilisation of social media for committing crime. It said the medium had become a source for pornography. Paedophiles used social media in a “big way”. Criminals exploit it to run weapons, drugs and contraband. Hate and violence are shared and spread through these virtual platforms.
It was in this context the court had called for a “properly framed regime” to allow the government to get information about the first originators of messages from ‘significant’ intermediaries with end-to-end encryption technology like WhatsApp.
The IT Rules mention this order of the Supreme Court as one of the reasons to justify its existence.
