MUMBAI: Elon Musk’s social media platform X has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government over its use of takedown orders to request social media content be removed.
India, the world’s biggest democracy, regularly ranks among the top five countries globally for the number of requests made by a government to remove social media content.
X’s new lawsuit marks the platform’s latest challenge against the Indian government’s censorship powers and comes as Musk’s Starlink and Tesla prepare to enter the world’s fifth-largest economy.
The case centres around the government’s use of a key legal provision to issue blocking orders, which X alleges bypasses existing safeguards.
“According to X, this provision… is being misused to create an unlawful parallel mechanism for blocking information,“ Indian legal news website Bar and Bench reported on Thursday.
The case will be heard by an Indian court in the southern state of Karnataka on March 27, after a brief hearing early this week did not reach a conclusion.
Musk’s social media platform is no stranger to legal tussles over content regulation in India.
In 2023, an Indian court fined the platform $61,000 after dismissing its plea challenging orders to remove tweets and accounts critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Nearly a year later, X said an appeal challenging the government’s blocking orders “on specific accounts and posts” remains pending.
“Consistent with our position, a writ appeal challenging the Indian government’s blocking orders remains pending. We have also provided the impacted users with notice of these actions in accordance with our policies,“ the company said on X in February 2024.
“Due to legal restrictions, we are unable to publish the executive orders, but we believe that making them public is essential for transparency.
“This lack of disclosure can lead to a lack of accountability and arbitrary decision-making.”
