A few weeks ago, Divisional Railway Manager, Howrah (DRM Howrah) blocked a Twitter user – meaning, the said user would not be able to tag DRM Howrah’s handle or view its tweets.
Speaking to TNM, the blocked user, who is also a journalist, said that he had tagged DRM Howrah continuously on an issue which was important for the migrant labourers working in Kerala. “When I was not able to tag the handle, I found that I was blocked,” he says.
Public utility services in India are increasingly making their presence felt on social media. These include government departments and companies like the railways, water supply, electricity and even the city administrations. In a time when social media is becoming the go-to place to make public service announcements, and to report and resolve user grievances, should it be allowed for public service or utility related social media accounts to block certain users on social media?
Incidentally, an American court had to deal with a case along similar line. An Appeals Court said that US President Donald Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account. The court ruled that since Trump uses Twitter to carry out government business, he cannot block users from reading his tweets.
In the US, the First Amendment rights relating to Freedom of Expression are more relaxed compared to India. But can something similar apply in India?
In violation of the Constitution?
Speaking to TNM, Prasanna, an advocate practicing in the Supreme Court, says that if there are no rules framed by authorities on social media usage, and that should mean they can’t block users either.
“They (government authorities’ social media accounts) also fall under the definition of ‘state’ per Article 12 of the Constitution. Since they are providing public service and information, arbitrary blocking of access to any person without lawful authority is unconstitutional,” he points out.
Article 12 of the Constitution says that “unless the context otherwise requires, the State includes the Government and Parliament of India and the Government and the Legislature of each of the States and all local or other authorities within the territory of India or under the control of the Government of India.”
Adding that it is also an unreasonable and unlawful denial of information under 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, Prasanna says, “Unless there are specific blocking guidelines/rules framed under a policy with the authority of law, the power to block is simply not vested in any of these state agencies.”
‘No need to accept abuses’
DRM Howrah doesn’t seem to be only one resorting to blocking users. A PR consultant who handles the social media account of a government utility service in another Indian state says that while the norm is to ignore abusive and critical comments, there have been instances when they have blocked users too.
“I don’t think we need to accept extremely adverse remarks,” he says, adding that the names of the users blocked are also shared their client i.e. government department. “We have monthly reports that we submit to our client. In it, we mention the accolades we received that month and also the adverse remarks we got. We also mention what we did to follow up on those adverse remarks, in the report,” he explains.
While there are presently no guidelines on whether public utility or government social media handles should be able to block users, Prasanna says that such rules or guidelines must be published, and made available as public information.