Twitter has filed a suit in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore, India, challenging a recent government order for the company to remove content and block dozens of accounts. The decision has escalated the social media company’s fight against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's drive to acquire more control over the content published on social media platforms.
Twitter complied with the order, made under India's information technology law, but immediately sought judicial relief.
According to the lawsuit paperwork, Twitter has alleged that New Delhi had abused its power by ordering it to arbitrarily and disproportionately remove several tweets from its platform, some of which “pertain to political content that is posted by official handles of political parties”, the social media giant stated.
The suit is the first legal challenge that the company has issued to push back against laws passed in 2021 that extended the Indian government’s censorship powers...