Former BJP leader K.N. Govindacharya Thursday sought stay from the Delhi High Court on the decision of various ministries to issue tenders for appointing private agencies to manage the government's social networking accounts.
Govindacharya said the move was a violation of the Public Records Act.
He had previously contended before the court that opening of an official account by the Prime Minister's Office and other central government ministries in social networking sites violated the Act.
Govindacharya said the servers of the social networking sites were located outside India and their official use by several ministries through private e-mail accounts violated the Act.
Filing the affidavit before Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Siddharth Mridul, advocate Virag Gupta, appearing for Govindacharya, said there existed multiple parodies and fake accounts of government departments, ministries, parliamentarians and other organisations on Facebook and other social media networks.
"Various ministries including the women and child development ministry have issued tenders for the appointment of a management agency for the operations of government social media accounts, which otherwise is illegal because the terms of agreements do not allow third party operations of social media accounts," the affidavit said.
The high court was hearing the public interest litigation (PIL) of Govindacharya seeking directions for the government to make more stringent laws on the use of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook by government officials to avoid transfer of important data outside India.
