The Delhi high court on Tuesday sought the response of Union Minister Smriti Irani on a plea by microblogging site Twitter seeking certain clarifications in the court's earlier order by which it had directed social media giants to remove web links allegedly containing objectionable material against the BJP leader and her daughter.
Justice Mini Pushkarna issued notice to Irani on an application filed by Twitter in which it sought clarification in the July 29 order to the effect that the platform is only bound to take down similar material which is found to be defamatory on being provided with URLs by plaintiff Irani. \
The application was filed on Irani's pending civil defamation suit in which the high court had on July 29 issued summons to three Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, and Netta D'Souza and had also asked them to take down tweets and other social media posts about the allegations levelled against the Union minister and her daughter.
Besides, the high court had directed search engine Google, social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove the allegations, videos, posts, tweets, re-tweets, captions, taglines along with the morphed pictures of the plaintiff and her daughter and the underlined material with such defamatory content or anything similar thereto including recirculation on their respective platforms.
Twitter sought clarification that the order is to be directed against defendants 1 to 3 (Congress leaders) and not against the social media platform.
As the counsel for Irani sought time to respond to the application, the high court granted her two weeks to file a reply.