On May 17, Tuesday, the Delhi High Court imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on ex-CBI director M Nageswara Rao for re-filing a petition seeking restoration of the blue tick verification for his Twitter account. The court, last month, had dismissed his similar plea against Twitter for unverifying his account on the microblogging website.
The single-judge bench of Justice Yashwant Varma reprimanded the ex-CBI director for wasting the court’s time. Varma was of the view that a similar plea with identical prayers was disposed of by the Court vide order dated April 7, 2022, by giving liberty to Rao to re-apply for verification.
“We passed an order on 7 April. What has constrained you to approach the court immediately? Your client seems to have a lot of free time. Do you want a return gift from us,” the bench remarked.
Advocate Raghav Awasthi, who represented Rao, argued that even after reapplying for the tag last month, Twitter has not reinstated his client’s ‘blue tick’ verification.
The court, however, said that there is no justification for filing the writ petition despite its earlier disposal. “The petition is thus dismissed with Rs 10,000 cost,” the bench stated.
Rao has petitioned the High Court, claiming that his Twitter account did have a blue tick, but that it was removed in March 2022. The dismissed petition also requested that the Centre designate or earmark one or more Compliance and Grievance officers within the Ministry solely to handle grievances or complaints from users of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram relating to compliance with the law and rules, including user identity verification, so that the general public is not subjected to unnecessary harassment.
While the case was filed through Advocate Mukesh Sharma, the petitioner was represented by Advocate Raghav Awasthi.
It may be noted that last year, Twitter arbitrarily removed ‘blue-tick’ verification from Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu’s personal Twitter handle. The micro-blogging site had not provided any explanation so far as they acted against the Vice President of India. However, after massive backlash, Twitter restored the verification badge on the Twitter profile of the Vice President of India.
