Elon Musk's X challenges Karnataka High Court court ruling on India’s content blocking orders

The court’s ruling had come weeks after the government rebuffed former X CEO Jack Dorsey's claim that India threatened to shut down the social media platform if it didn't comply with orders to restrict accounts critical of how farmer protests were handled in 2021 as a "lie."

The court ruled that Twitter was served notices, to which it did not comply, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said in a tweet. He said Dorsey’s claims were "outright lies" and that they were an attempt to deflect attention from X's questionable actions during that period.

Following the order, the minister tweeted that the bench during the verdict said, "So you (Twitter) have not given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year of delay... then all of sudden you comply and approach the court."

According to the filing cited by Reuters, X said that there must be "discernible parameters" on what mandates the blocking of an entire account instead of a specific post, otherwise the government's "power to censor future content is untrammelled".

If X's appeal is rejected, the government "will be emboldened to issue more blocking orders" that violate the law, said X's 96-page filing submitted by local law firm Poovayya & Co, according to Reuters.