Twitter Account Suspension: Delhi HC Dismisses Application Seeking To Implead Elon Musk

The Delhi High Court (HC) on Friday (November 4) reportedly dismissed a case seeking impleadment of Twitter owner Elon Musk in an account suspension case.

The court also imposed a penalty of INR 25,000 on the applicant.

In essence, an impleadment application seeks to make a new person a party to an existing lawsuit.

Justice Yashwant Varma, while dismissing the case, called it thoroughly misconceived. “The application is thoroughly misconceived. It cannot be disputed that the corporate entity (Twitter) already stands represented. There is no occasion for the application to be moved. The same is dismissed with INR 25,000 cost,” Varma said. 

Last week, Tesla boss Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter for $44 Bn. 

During the hearing, attorney Raghav Awasthi, appearing for the applicant, said that Musk is the sole director of the micro-blogging platform Twitter and holds shares in that company.

Citing Musk’s tweet, the application said that he has a different viewpoint on free speech as he opines that “as long as the speech does not violate the law of the country in question, the same should not be curtailed by Twitter”.

The application was moved by Dimple Kaul. As per the petition, Kaul’s Twitter account was suspended by the micro-blogging platform without any warning or prior notice.

Responding to the plea, the central government, earlier in an affidavit, said that significant social media intermediaries (SSMIs) are required to issue prior notice to the users before taking action against their accounts. Any failure to do so, would lead to flouting of IT Rules, 2021, the affidavit said. 

It also said that the SSMIs can take down the entire information posted by users or suspend the user account only if tweets or posts on social media platforms are unlawful. 

This is not the first time when Twitter has been dragged to a court by users in India for account suspension. While a journalist moved Delhi HC earlier this year against the platform for locking her account, another user sought the court’s intervention earlier this week on Twitter’s decision to ban his account.

The platform has also been involved in legal tussles with the Indian government, and is currently fighting a case in Karnataka High Court against some of the takedown orders issued by the Centre.

Meanwhile, Musk has said that Twitter will form a “content moderation council” to take decisions related to content and account reinstatement on the platform. It remains to be seen if the move would help the microblogging platform deal better with the Indian regulations.

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