Delhi High Court asks Union Minister Smriti Irani to share web links of objectionable comments

The Delhi High Court has sought response from Union Minister Smriti Irani on a plea by YouTube and Twitter, wherein it seeks details of URLs and web links of objectionable comments. The comments were made against the BJP leader and her daughter by three Congress leaders. Justice Mini Pushkarna issued a notice to the minister after Google told the court that she was under obligation to provide them the links that have to be disabled according to the court’s direction made on July 29.

Google has told the court that it was complying with the earlier orders wherein it had removed one web link that was shared by Irani. The social media firms have sought modification of the July 29 order in which the court asked them to remove the allegations, videos, posts, tweets, re-tweets, captions, and taglines shared by politicians such as Jairam Ramesh, Netta D’ Souza and Pawan Khera if the Congress leaders did not remove the content within 24 hours.

Smriti Irani asked by Court to share links

The court order comes after the Union Minister filed a civil defamation suit wherein she was seeking removal of posts as an interim basis while also asking damages to the tune of Rs. 2 crores.

Senior advocate Arvind Nigam, who was representing Google, said that the URLs that Irani wanted to be removed must be provided to the social media intermediary. He said that Google is not an adjudicating authority and it cannot take a call on the content to be removed and, hence, the Irani is under an obligation to give them the web links. The action would be taken post that.