X’s failure to remove Rana Ayyub’s decade-old posts could lead to loss of safe harbour: Centre

The Union government and the Delhi Police on Friday told the Delhi High Court that the failure of social media platform X to remove the allegedly inflammatory posts by journalist Rana Ayyub despite orders can lead to the withdrawal of its safe harbour protection in India, Bar and Bench reported.

Removal of safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act would make the platform liable for the content in question.

The submissions were made in affidavits before Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav in a petition filed by a lawyer named Amita Sachdeva seeking that six posts made by the journalist between 2013 and 2017, including about Hindu deities and Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar, be taken down.

On Wednesday, the court asked the police and X to take action against Ayyub for the posts. It had added that the matter required urgent consideration and that X, the Delhi Police and the government would have to act in tandem.

It had also issued notice to Ayyub, X and the Delhi Police, seeking their responses to the petition by Thursday.

“The action is necessary in view of the highly derogatory, inflammatory and communal tweets posted by [Ayyub] pursuant to which an [first information report] has been registered on the orders of a competent court,” Kaurav had said on Wednesday.

Sachdeva had also approached a trial court in Delhi in...

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