The Karnataka High Court on Friday imposed a fine of INR 5 million ($60,905) on Twitter and dismissed the social media giant's plea challenging directions of the Centre to remove some tweets and accounts.
In July last year, Twitter moved the Karnataka High Court challenging the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's blocking orders, calling the directions arbitrary and against freedom of speech and expression.
The microblogging site refused to take down the tweets, saying that the orders to block some tweets were "procedurally and substantially deficient of the provision" and "demonstrate excessive use of powers".
After Twitter's refusal, the Federal IT Ministry in a notice to Twitter said that failure to take down the tweets would lead to it losing its safe harbor immunity available under Section 79(1) of the IT Act.
Meanwhile, soon after the court ordered Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar, all platforms had to comply with the Indian law.
"Our relationship with (social media) platforms isn't adversarial. Our insistence is that law must be followed. I am glad that the court has today laid down that non-compliance isn't an option. All platforms in India have to comply with Indian law", Chandrasekhar said.
Of the 1,474 accounts and 175 tweets ordered to be blocked by the Central government, Twitter opposed taking down 39 URLs.