New Delhi, March 20 -- X, formerly Twitter, has filed a petition in the Karnataka high court challenging the Indian government's use of Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, arguing that it not only sets up an illegal parallel content-blocking process but also violates the Supreme Court's 2015 Shreya Singhal judgment, which declared that content could only be blocked through a competent court order or under Section 69A's structured process.

As per Section 79(3)(b), an intermediary can lose its safe harbour - which protects platforms from liability for third-party content - if it fails to remove or disable access to content upon being informed by the "appropriate" government or its agency. X argues that this provision does n...