Plea in Supreme Court alleges Twitter "is sympathetic to terrorist groups”; Court seeks response from Central government

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the Central government in a plea by Vinit Goenka, former national co-convener of the BJP IT cell seeking directions to the government to enact a law so that social media platform, Twitter can be prosecuted for their alleged "anti-India Tweets"..Goenka has prayed that a mechanism be framed to check advertisements and paid content on Twitter that may be hateful, inciting, or seditious and to rein in social media accounts "in order to stop the hatred, fake, investigative and other news which are contrary to the law of the country or violates the law of the country”..A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde issued notice to the Central government and tagged the plea long with another similar matter already pending before the top court. .Goenka, Member of Governing Council of CRIS, Ministry of Railway has alleged that Twitter is sympathetic to terrorist groups and even promotes tweets which are anti-India and amount to waging war against Union of India. .In the additional affidavit recently filed by Goenka, it has been stated that on February 1, 2021, Ministry of Home had directed Twitter to block more than 250 twitter accounts who were promoting fake and provocative contents. But the social media platform refused to do so. "Twitter is continuously indulge in creating panic in the society and further the Govt. of India has no law / mechanism to take action for the aforementioned offences," the additional affidavit states. .The plea also mentions that Delhi Police had issued a statement that over 300 twitter handles were generated from Pakistan from January 13 to January 18, 2021, to organize the Tractor Rally in order to disrupt the Republic Day celebrations..In his plea filed through advocate Ashwani Dubey, Goenka has claimed that there are 35 million twitter handles in India while total number of Facebook accounts is 350 million. Experts say around 10% Twitter handles (3.5 million) and 10% Facebook accounts (35 million) are duplicates/bogus or fake accounts, the petition states. .“There are numerous fake twitter handles in the name of high profile dignitaries such as the President of India, Vice President of India, Chief Justice of india including Supreme Court and High Court judges which uses real photo of constitutional authorities and eminent citizens. Therefore, common man relies upon th messages published from these twitter handles and facebook accounts,” it has been submitted..The plea claims that fake news is the root cause of many riots including the recent riots in Delhi and that fake accounts are used to “propagate casteism, communalism, regionalism, linguism, radicalism, and separatism, which endanger fraternity, unity and regional integration.”“Many people use fake twitter handles and Facebook accounts for personal interests such as gaining financial income from one person or blackmailing his opponents,” the plea further contends. .In the absence of any law to deal with offensive and hatred messages, platforms like twitter are “knowingly promoting the messages which are against the law of the land and therefore Twitter needs to explain reasons for circulating and promoting the prohibited content." Twitter is sympathetic to terrorist groups, the plea adds. .It is Goenka's case that the legislature is empowered to frame law restricting freedom of speech under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. .In December last year, a CJI SA Bobde led bench had sought a response from the Centre and eight states, including Karnataka and Assam, on a plea of Twitter Communications India Pvt Ltd seeking quashing of multiple FIRs lodged against it for allegedly promoting a tweet on ‘Khalistan’.Supreme Court had taken note of the submissions of Senior Advocate Sajjan Poovayya, appearing for Twitter India, that there cannot be multiple FIRs for one incident and sought their quashing.The firm has sought clubbing of the FIRs for conducting the trial in one lower court as was done in the case of journalist Arnab Goswami.