ORDER :

(Krishna S. Dixit, J.)

Petitioner, claiming to be an Intermediary under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (hereafter 'Act'), is knocking at the doors of Writ Court complaining against certain Blocking Orders issued by the respondents, whereby it is directed to bar access of certain information to the public, by effecting suspension of some accounts on Twitter i.e., www.twitter.com. In the alternative, petitioner seeks a direction at the hands of this court 'to modify the Blocking Orders to the extent of Table A of Annexure S to revoke the account level directions and instead identify specific tweets which are violative of Section 69A of the IT Act with reasons.' The respondents vide letter dated 27 June 2022 have warned the petitioner of serious consequences such as withdrawal of protection availing under section 79(1) of the Act and initiation of criminal proceedings as well if these orders are not complied with.

2. Particulars of the said orders are furnished by the petitioner in a tabular form as under:

"Of the above, only a total 39 URLs are being challenged by the petitioner in the present petition" avers the petitioner at the bottom of paragraph 4 of the petition.

II. After service of notice, the respondent-Union of India and its designated officer from the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, have entered appearance through their learned Sr. Standing Counsel and resist the Petition, making submission in justification of the impugned orders and the reasons on which they have been constructed. The respondents have filed their Statement of Objections countering the petition averments. Both the parties have filed certain Write-Ups which may partake the character of additional pleadings supportive of each other's stand as taken up in the original pleadings.

III. Foundational Facts Of The Case:

(i) Petitioner is a company incorporated under the laws of the United States of America, having its registered office at San Francisco, California. In the petition, it has shown the 'contact address' as Dickenson Road, Bangalore, India. Petitioner provides services on Twitter to users inter alia in India; Twitter is claimed to be a global platform for self-expression of its users to communicate and stay connected through messages of 280 characters or less (Tweets), at times with pictures/videos. Petitioner answers the description of "intermediary" as given in section 2(1)(w) of the Act since its functions are restricted to receiving, storing & transmitting 'records' or providing 'any service with respect to that record', on behalf of any user of Twitter platform.

(ii) 1st Respondent-Union of India [hereafter 'UOI'] is the "appropriate government" as defined under Section 2(e) of the Act; 2nd Respondent happens to be the "Designated Officer" [hereafter 'Designated Officer'] as defined under Rule 2(c) of the Information Technology (Procedures and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 [hereafter ' Website Blocking Rules ']. The respondents in exercise of power availing under section 69A of the Act, have issued Blocking Orders on various dates. These Blocking Orders in all comprise of 1,474 Twitter accounts and 175 Tweets. A brief description of this is given in paragraph No.4. Petition also states 'Of the above, only a total of 39 URLs are being challen