Delhi High Court imposes ₹10k costs on former CBI director M Nageswara Rao for filing plea to restore Twitter handle blue tick

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday imposed costs of ₹10,000 on former CBI interim director M Nageswara Rao for filing a petition seeking restoration of blue tick (verification tag) on his twitter account barely a month after an earlier order passed by the Court in relation to the matter. .Single-judge Justice Yashwant Varma noted that a previous order was passed in the matter only on April 7 and there was no justification which warranted the present petition to be filed so soon as the respondents (Twitter) might not have had enough time to deal with the matter. "We passed an order on 7 April. What has constrained you to approach the court immediately? Your client seems to have a lot of free time. Do you want a return gift from us," the Court remarked during the course of the hearing. Advocate Raghav Awasthi, appearing for Rao, argued that his last communication with Twitter was on April 18 and his verification is yet to be restored. Awasthi requested the court to list the matter with a batch of matters dealing with the same issue. The Court, however, refused the request and dismissed the petition with costs. .Rao had approached the Court seeking restoration of the blue tick (verification tag) on his Twitter account which was removed by the micro-blogging website in March. .A petition had been filed by Rao earlier as well. However, on April 7, the Court refused to interfere in the plea and asked the retired IPS officer to approach Twitter with his complaint first. .In his present petition, filed through advocate Mukesh Sharma, Rao said that he had written several mails to the social media platform but, as expected, his verification tag has not been restored. .Apart from seeking restoration of his verification, Rao also sought a direction to the Central government to designate or earmark one or more Compliance and Grievance officers within the Ministry. The officers, the plea argued, should exclusively handle grievances or complaints from users of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram relating to compliance with the law and rules including verification of user identity so that general public are not subjected to unnecessary harassment.