Social media platform X has approached the Karnataka High Court against the Centre’s powers to revoke safe harbour provisions under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, the Hindustan Times reported on Thursday.

This provision states that online intermediaries, such as social media platforms, can lose their safe harbour status if they fail to remove or disable access to content that is used to commit an “unlawful act” despite being told to do so by government authorities.

Removing this status would mean that the platforms would be liable for the content in question.

X, in its petition before the High Court, has argued that the government is misusing this section to bypass the requirements of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act to censor online content, PTI reported.

Section 69A states that online content can be blocked on grounds such as national sovereignty, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign countries or public order. In contrast, Section 79(3)(b) does not define an “unlawful act”, and does not contain any review mechanism.

X said such a mechanism constitutes an illegal parallel process to block online content.

It contended that this approach contradicts the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India case of 2015, which held that content could only be blocked either through a judicial process or through Section 69A.

The social media platform has also sought protection for not registering an employee on Sahyog, a portal set up by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre to “streamline” orders under Section 79(3)(b).

X has described this portal as a “censorship portal”, and claimed that the Information Technology Act does not contain any provision to create such a portal, or to require social platforms to appoint a nodal officer for it.

The social media platform had challenged the government’s content-blocking powers in 2022 as well. At the time, it had filed a petition against orders under Section 69A that directed entire accounts to be blocked, rather than specific tweets.

However, in June 2023, the Karnataka High Court dismissed the petition. The court imposed a fine of Rs 50 lakh on X, then called Twitter, saying that it did not give reasons for not complying with the government’s demands in a timely manner.

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