Inter alia, Hegde also sought a direction to social media platform Twitter to restore his account which was permanently suspended on November 5, 2019. He contended that the suspension is contrary to the "Twitter Rules". "A violation of his right to free speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a).
A violation of his right to assembly and right to form association guaranteed by Articles 19 (1) (b) and 19 (1) (c) of the Constitution," the petition stated. Seeking the framing of guidelines, the petition submitted that the Information Technology Act authorises the Central Government to prescribe them to the intermediaries.
"In exercise of these powers, the Central Government has laid down various guidelines regarding when content is to be taken down. However, no guidelines to ensure that legal speech is not censored have been laid down," it read. The petition is likely to come up for hearing later this week.