HC imposes Rs 10k costs on CBI’s ex-interim director Nageswara Rao challenging removal of blue tick by Twitter

New Delhi, May 17

The Delhi High Court Tuesday imposed a cost of Rs 10,000 on former interim Director of CBI M Nageswara Rao challenging the action of Twitter to remove his verification tag, blue tick, from the microblogging website account.

Justice Yashwant Varma noted that on April 7 also, a plea with similar prayers was disposed of by the court by giving liberty to Rao to re-apply for a verification tag.

“This court takes note that there was absolutely no justification which warranted the writ petition to be filed bearing in mind that the earlier writ petition was disposed of on April 7,” the court said.

On April 7, the court granted liberty to Rao to pursue appropriate remedies in case any adverse decision is made by Twitter.

The plea said in pursuance of the court’s order, he reapplied for the Verification Tag, however, the Verification Tag attached to his Twitter handle was not re-instated till date after which he filed the fresh petition.

The court said Twitter must be recognised to have at least taken a reasonable time to decide on the representation.

“The petition is thus dismissed with Rs 10,000 costs,” the court said.

Rao, a retired IPS officer, said his account on Twitter did contain a blue tick but the same was removed in March 2022.

In his plea, he had also sought directions to the Centre to designate or earmark one or more Compliance and Grievance officers within the Ministry exclusively to handle grievances or complaints from users of Social Media platforms like Twitter, FB, Instagram, etc relating to compliance to the law and rules including verification of user identity so that general public is not subjected to unnecessary harassment.