PANAJI
The Bombay High Court at Goa dismissed a petition filed by the Sanatan Sanstha, which had approached the Court to issue directions to Facebook to restore the pages the organization operated on the social media platform.
Sanatan Sanstha claimed that Facebook’s decision to take down the pages was arbitrary and in doing so without any order from any court or government authority, Facebook had granted to itself powers that are in the domain of the state.
Facebook banned the organization from its platform and took down the pages claiming that “as per the terms of service they have the right to permanently disable access to any account that breaches its community standards.”
The High Court, however, ruled that the organization had not violated any law, much less the fundamental rights of the petitioners and at best the decision of Facebook to take down the pages was a contractual dispute that should be taken to the appropriate forum.
“The dispute regarding blocking or unblocking of the Petitioner's Facebook pages appears to be governed by the contractual relationship between the petitioner and respondents (Facebook) and normally purely contractual disputes between private parties cannot be adjudicated in proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution of India,” the High Court bench of Justices M S Sonak and M S Jawalkar, said.
The Sanatan Sanstha claimed that they were using the pages they operated “to spread the essence of their spirituality and allied matters and Facebook's action disabled them from communicating or propagating the petitioner’s philosophy and disabling its followers from accessing information that they used to post on such pages.”
Facebook, however, countered saying that no user could claim the ‘right’ to have their content hosted on their platform.
“The petitioner has no right to seek hosting or transmission of its information or its philosophical views on the platform provided by Facebook,” Adv Darius Khambata who appeared for Facebook had argued.
“All these matters are in the realm of contract and if at all the petitioner has any grievance, they will have to seek redressal before any appropriate forum which is empowered to adjudicate disputes between the two private parties,” he added.
“Based on the sketchy and unclear pleadings in this matter, however, there is no case made out for grant of any declaratory relief in this petition. Even, otherwise, (Shirish) Punalekar (advocate for Sanatan Sanstha) was unable to point out any provision under the Information Technology Act, based on which the petitioner could insist on maintaining a Facebook page on the platform provided… without agreeing to be bound by the contractual terms that may have been proposed,” the High Court said.
“If there is some breach of contractual relationship involved in the blocking of the Facebook page then, it is for the petitioners to take appropriate steps before the appropriate forum to secure redress. But, a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India may not be an appropriate remedy for this purpose,” the bench said.
