Karnataka High Court reserves judgment in X Corp's challenge to Sahyog portal

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday reserved its judgment in a petition filed by X Corp (formerly Twitter) challenging the legality of the Central government’s ‘Sahyog’ portal—an online platform used to issue content takedown orders to intermediaries..Justice M Nagaprasanna heard final rejoinder arguments by Senior Advocates KG Raghavan for X Corp and Aditya Sondhi for Digipub, a consortium of digital news portals, who argued that the Sahyog portal has no statutory basis and bypasses procedural safeguards laid down by the Supreme Court in the judgment in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India..Social media platform X Corp moved the Court contending that Sahyog portal enables blocking orders to be issued under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act), thereby circumventing the due process mandated under Section 69A of the IT Act and the Shreya Singhal ruling. The petition was filed following multiple takedown orders issued by the Ministry of Railways after posts about a recent stampede at New Delhi Railway Station. X sought interim relief and a declaration that Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act does not authorise content blocking..As part of its response, the Union government argued that X Corp, being a foreign company, cannot invoke fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution. In written submissions filed earlier this month, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta contended that “safe harbour” under Section 79 is a conditional privilege—not an absolute right—and that the Sahyog portal simply streamlines enforcement under Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules.“The greatest threat to free speech may not come from the government, it may come from the unregulated private oligopolies of entities like the petitioner,” the Centre submitted, arguing that social media platforms must be regulated differently from traditional media due to their algorithmic control and curatorial roles. It relied on recent US Supreme Court decisions including Moody v. NetChoice and TikTok v. Garland to support its position.The government also rejected X Corp’s claim that Sahyog bypasses Section 69A.It was argued that the portal serves a different purpose by facilitating prompt due diligence compliance, not punitive blocking. It was also highlighted that intermediaries like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have joined the portal and that Meta is likely to follow..Meanwhile, Raghavan argued that relying on Section 79 as a source of power would “create chaos,” especially since it was intended to provide safe harbour, not enable enforcement. “If the legislature wanted to create a portal, it would have expressly said so,” he said, reading Section 26(2) of the IT Act to assert that the Sahyog platform lacks legislative backing. .Sondhi addressed the Centre’s claim that the Supreme Court’s Shreya Singhal judgment relied heavily on Reno v. ACLU, which has been diluted by the recent TikTok ruling in the US. “It’s not like Reno is the foundation of Shreya Singhal,” he said, citing other judgments such as Cricket Association of Bengal and Sakaal Newspapers. He cautioned against judicial endorsement of executive overreach and said interpreting 79(3)(b) as a blocking provision would amount to judicial legislation..The Court after hearing all parties reserved its verdict.