No HC relief for CJP on blocked X a/c, matter with govt panel

NEW DELHI: Declining any interim relief to the outfit that calls itself Cockroach Janta Party, Delhi high court on Friday sent its plea seeking unblocking of its X account to a review committee of the govt under the IT Rules to examine the issue and take a decision before July 7, reports Abhinav Garg.

Justice Purushaindra K Kaurav refused conditional relief, as done in earlier cases where the account is restored but offending tweets remain blocked. "The defence in those cases was that there were some tweets found to be offending. In this case, the entire activity per se perhaps was slightly offending," he remarked.



Justice Kaurav permitted CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke to appear virtually before the committee, saying if it is satisfied that blocking must be set aside, it is legally empowered to do so.

Issuing notice to the Centre and X, on Dipke’s petition against the blocking of the CJP’s handle, HC sought their responses and listed the matter for hearing on July 7.

Senior advocate Akhil Sibal, appearing for Dipke, submitted that the CJP account was “pure satire” and if there were some “objectionable” tweets, only those could be blocked instead of withholding the entire account.

Seeking interim unblocking of the handle, Sibal urged the judge to peruse the blocking order. Justice Kaurav, however, observed that the blocking order was not on record and it would consider the petitioner’s request after the Centre files a reply to the plea.

“Let them take notice and come back to us,” the judge said, adding that the petitioner could raise his grievance before the review committee.