Delhi High Court Imposes ₹25K Cost On Litigant Seeking Impleadment Of Elon Musk In Case Against Twitter Account Suspension

The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed with Rs. 25,000 cost an application seeking impleadment of Elon Musk in a plea challenging the suspension of a Twitter account.

Justice Yashwant Varma dismissed the application by calling it "thoroughly misconceived."

"The application is thoroughly misconceived. It cannot possibly be disputed that the corporate entity (Twitter) already stands represented. There is no occasion for the application to be moved. The same is dismissed with Rs. 25,000 cost," the court said.

The order was passed on the application moved in a pending case of a woman, Dimple Kaul, against suspension of her account, alleging that the same was suspended without giving her a hearing.

During the course of hearing, Advocate Raghav Awasthi appearing for Kaul submitted  that he had instructions to press the application seeking impleadment of Musk. He argued that not only Musk is the sole Director of Twitter but he also holds shares in it.

At the outset, Justice Varma asked Awasthi "Are you serious in prosecuting this application?". The counsel responded in affirmative.

In the application moved through advocate Mukesh Sharma, it has been argued that Musk "has a very different stand" on free speech whereby his opinion is that "as long as speech does not violate the law of the country in question, the same should not be curtailed by Twitter."

The application placed reliance on Musk's tweets.

"That on 27.10.2022, Twitter Inc. (Respondent No.2) has been moved into the private hands of Mr. Elon Musk. As of now, shares of the same are also not being traded on the New York Stock Exchange," the plea adds.

Responding to the Kaul's petition, Centre had earlier filed an affidavit stating that Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs) are expected to issue prior notice to the user before taking any action on the account and that failure to comply with the same may amount to a violation of Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules 2021.

It was also submitted that if the intermediary platform falls under the Significant Social Media Intermediary (SSMI) category as defined in the IT Rules, 2021, then as per rule 4(8), the SSMI is expected to issue a prior notification to the user explaining the action being taken and the grounds or reasons for taking such action.

Only in cases where the majority of the contents or posts or tweets in a user account are unlawful, the platform may take the extreme step of taking down the whole information or suspending the whole account, the Centre had said.

A batch of pleas challenging action of micro-blogging platform to permanently suspend user accounts is pending before the high court.

Case Title: DIMPLE KAUL v. UOI and other connected matters

#DelhiHighCourt dismisses with 25K cost an application seeking impleadment of #ElonMusk in a plea concerning suspension of #twitter account.
"The application is thoroughly misconceived. The same is dismissed with 25K cost," Justice Yashwant Varma said. pic.twitter.com/lCAKJtDdYl

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) November 4, 2022