Smriti Irani Defamation Case: Twitter moves Delhi High court seeking clarification on its previous order

Microblogging site Twitter has moved Delhi High Court seeking clarification on its earlier order with regards to Union Minister Smriti Irani’s defamation case. The microblogging site has sought certain clarifications in the order in which the court has directed the social media giants to remove web links allegedly containing objectionable content against the BJP leader and her daughter.

Irani received notice from Justice Mini Pushkarna in response to an application filed by Twitter seeking clarification of the July 29 ruling stating that the platform is only required to remove identical content that is found to be defamatory upon receipt of URLs from plaintiff Irani.

The request was made in connection with Irani's ongoing civil defamation case, in which the high court on July 29 summoned three Congress leaders—Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, and Netta D'Souza—and ordered them to delete tweets and other social media posts about accusations made against the union minister and her daughter.

Additionally, the high court had ordered search engine Google, social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to take down any content that contained defamatory statements, including videos, posts, tweets, retweets, captions, taglines, morphed images of the plaintiff and her daughter, and underlined material.

Twitter asked for clarification that the injunction should be aimed to Defendants 1 to 3 (Congress Leaders), not at the social media site.