The Delhi High Court on Thursday excused former interim CBI Director M Nageswara Rao from paying a cost of Rs 25,000 imposed on him at the time of dismissal of his challenge to the alleged removal of “blue tick” from his Twitter account by the micro-blogging platform. The retired IPS officer tendered his unconditional apology to the court and said that he was a pensioner who “was just asking for his identity to be secured”.
Waiving the cost, Justice Yashwant Varma ordered, “Bearing in mind the unconditional apology which is tendered on behalf of the petitioner, the cost in terms of the order of May 17, 2022 shall stand deleted.” In May, the court had dismissed Rao's plea against the removal of the verification tag from his Twitter account while noting 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.”
On April 7, the court had granted liberty to Rao to pursue appropriate remedies with regard to his grievances in case any adverse decision is made by Twitter. The plea had said that in pursuance to the court's order, he reapplied for the verification tag, however, it was not reinstated. Rao had claimed that 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 exclusively to handle complaints from users of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram relating to compliance to the law and rules, including verification of user identity, so that people are not subjected to unnecessary harassment.
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