Delhi High Court asks Centre to decide SFI's plea against Instagram account blocking

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked the Central government's grievance appellate committee (GAC) to decide the Students' Federation of India (SFI) appeal against the blocking of its Instagram account.

Justice Amit Mahajan said that he expects the SFI's appeal to be decided in three weeks.

SFI is the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

The court passed the order on a plea filed by SFI.

Advocate Apar Gupta appeared for the student organisation and stated the statutory time period prescribed to decide such an appeal is four weeks.

He said the Court had previously disposed off similar matters with direction to the government to decide the appeal in an additional four weeks. 

The Court recorded that the SFI had filed the appeal before the government on August 12 and no order has been passed till date. It then disposed of the plea, asking the government to decide the appeal.

According to SFI, Instagram permanently disabled the SFI Delhi account on July 5, stating that it “may be associated with another account that has gone against our rules” and therefore did not comply with its community standards on account integrity.

SFI stated that Instagram did not disclose any further particulars or identify the allegedly associated account.

The account, created in 2018, had around 13,000 followers. 

The students' body said they first appealed against the action on July 7 and subsequently approached Meta's grievance officer on July 9. However, they received no response, following which they approached the GAC on August 12.

As of September 16, the GAC website showed the appeal as “under process”, despite more than 30 days having elapsed, the petition stated.

The petitioner relied on Rule 3A(4) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which requires the GAC to deal with appeals expeditiously and endeavour to resolve them finally within 30 calendar days.

It also sought a direction to the GAC to conduct its appeal process in conformity with the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed under Articles 14, 19(1)(a), 19(1)(g), and 21. 

The petition was filed through advocate Naman Kumar.