Delhi High Court removes costs imposed on former CBI director M Nageswara Rao in his plea for Twitter blue tick

The Delhi High Court on Thursday removed the costs it had earlier imposed on former CBI Director M Nageswara Rao for filing a petition demanding a blue tick on his Twitter handle..Rao tendered an unconditional apology and his counsel told the court today that the petition crossed the boundary of reasonableness and that he was only asking his identity on Twitter. Single-judge Justice Yashwant Varma noted the same and ordered that the cost imposed be removed. .The Delhi High Court had on May 17, 2022 imposed costs of ₹25,000 on 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..His verification tag 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, Rao said that he had written several mails to the social media platform but, as expected, his verification tag was not restored.Apart from seeking restoration of blue tick, 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..Delhi High Court imposes ₹10k costs on former CBI director M Nageswara Rao for filing plea to restore Twitter handle blue tick