No plan to curb social media: Madras High Court

Source: thehindu.com

The Madras High Court on Wednesday made it clear that it was absolutely not interested, at any point of time, in addressing a plea made by two public interest litigation (PIL) petitioners to link Aadhaar or any other government authorised identity proof with social media accounts held by individuals.

Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad clarified that they had expanded the scope of the two PIL petitions long back and had issued notices to Facebook, YouTube, Google, WhatsApp, Twitter and a few others only to make them share information with the police in cases involving cyber crimes.

The judges agreed with the submissions of Advocate General Vijay Narayan and Additional Government Pleader E. Manoharan that much water had flowed ever since the court expanded the scope of the case in August last year and the social media giants too had been participating in the proceedings for long.

However, some of them had moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday with a plea to transfer the two cases pending in Madras High Court, as well as similar cases pending in other HCs, to the apex court in order to avoid contradictory verdicts.

Differentiating between issues being adjudicated by other High Courts and that which they were dealing with, the judges said, a decision was taken by them long back to “not address” the prayers as such in the two PIL petitions in view of Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhar with riders.

In a majority opinion delivered in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy’s case on Septemebr 26, 2018, the Supreme Court had held that there was nothing wrong in linking Aadhar with Permanent Account Number (PAN) issued by Income Tax department but declared as unconstitutional its linkage with bank accounts and SIM cards.

The court had also insulated children from the Aadhar regime and ordered that educational institutions should not insist on production of Aadhaar cards. Therefore, the Division Bench of the Madras High Court had chosen to not entertain the PIL petitioners’ plea for linking Aadhar with social media accounts.

However, when the State police complained to the court about lack of cooperation by most of the social media giants in solving cyber crimes, the Bench decided to adjudicate that issue alone in terms of the provisions of the Information Technology Act of 2000 and the statutory rules framed thereunder.

Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, representing one of the social media companies, stated that all these issues were brought to the notice of the Supreme Court on Tuesday by Attorney General K.K. Venugopal. Yet, the apex court had restrained the Madras High Court from passing any kind of “effective order” on the PIL petitions.

Stating that it was actually a polite way of asking the High Court to not proceed with the hearing on the PIL petitions until a decision was taken by the apex court on the transfer petitions, the senior counsel urged the court to simply adjourn the hearing after September 13, the next date of hearing on the transfer plea.

Accepting his submissions, the Bench led by Justice Manikumar adjourned the hearing on the two PIL petitions to September 19. It said, propriety would demand that the High Court awaits the decision of the superior court.