A joint committee of Parliament for Data Protection on Thursday asked Twitter why it has not taken any action against comedian Kunal Kamra’s tweets about the Chief Justic of India, ANI reported. BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Congress MP Vivek Tankha interrogated Twitter’s policy head.
Reacting to this questioning, Kamra tweeted, “Personal liberty is like Promotions in corporate India…”
Twitter, meanwhile, said it can’t remove the post unless the court issues such orders, Meenakshi Lekhi said.
“We’ve asked for an answer in 7 days. Since there are no laws in India regarding these, we have to talk to the top executives of such service providers,” Meenakshi Lekhi said.
On November 12, Attorney General K K Venugopal granted consent for initiation of contempt proceedings against stand-up comic artist Kunal Kamra for his tweets.“The tweets which I am extracting below are not only in bad taste but clearly cross the line between humour and contempt of the court”, said Venugopal.
A day after, on November 13, a petition was Friday filed in the Supreme Court seeking initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against Kamra.
The petition, filed by five petitioners including law student Shrirang Katneshwarkar, has claimed that Kamra had started publishing tweets on November 11 when the top court was hearing the appeal of journalist Arnab Goswami against the Bombay High Court’s order rejecting his plea seeking interim bail in the 2018 abetment to suicide case.
Kamra had refused to retract his tweets and apologise.
“The tweets I recently put out have been found in contempt of court. All that I tweeted was from my view of the Supreme Court of India giving a partial decision in favour of a Prime Time Loudspeaker,” he said in a statement addressed to Venugopal and the judges on his Twitter page. “My view hasn’t changed because the silence of the Supreme Court of India on matters of other’s personal liberty cannot go uncriticized. I don’t intend to retract my tweets or apologise for them. I believe they speak for themselves,” he had added.
