Plea in Delhi HC seeks guidelines on censoring of online speech by social media sites

A petition was filed in the Delhi High Court on Monday seeking a direction to the central government to frame guidelines to ensure that online speech is not "arbitrarily censored" by the social media websites.

The petition, filed by Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, also raised the issue of whether large multi-national corporations, discharging a public function by serving millions of users, are amenable to constitutional scrutiny for their actions.

Inter alia, Hegde also sought a direction to social media platform Twitter to restore his account which was permanently suspended on November 5, 2019.

He contended that the suspension is contrary to the "Twitter Rules". "A violation of his right to free speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a). A violation of his right to assembly and right to form association guaranteed by Articles 19 (1) (b) and 19 (1) (c) of the Constitution," the petition stated.

Seeking the framing of guidelines, the petition submitted that the Information Technology Act authorises the Central Government to prescribe them to the intermediaries.

"In exercise of these powers, the Central Government has laid down various guidelines regarding when content is to be taken down. However, no guidelines to ensure that legal speech is not censored have been laid down," it read.

The petition is likely to come up for hearing later this week.