Tamil Nadu Government Wants The Supreme Court To Dismiss Facebook's Transfer Petition

The State of Tamil Nadu is attempting to convince the Supreme Court to dismiss Facebook’s transfer petition.

Vijay Narayan, Advocate General, submitted a state’s response to the Supreme Court a week ago, on the 12^th of September. The response also asks the Court to let the Madras High Court to pass proper judgment on WhatsApp traceability and the related matters. As stated by him, the TN state government wished to pass judgment at a state level.

In August, a transfer petition relating to a lawsuit about the government’s requirement to make WhatsApp’s messages traceable, was filed by Facebook to the Supreme Court. The request of Facebook that the Supreme Court hear its plea for the transfer of cases concerning the demand for the site to link social media accounts to Aadhaar number.

A notice to Google, Twitter, the Centre, and YouTube was sent by the top court and these parties must provide an answer on the 13^th of September.

The hearing on the case of linking Aadhaar number and social media accounts would happen but no final order will be announced.

The Tamil Nadu state’s response pointed out that the transfer petition of Facebook was built on “frivolous ground” and it restrains “material facts and documents”.

Another point the state made was that the company’s privacy is a “red herring,” referring to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the fact that the company made profit by exploiting user data to target ads.

The transfer plea of Facebook is its latest attempt to transfer the four petitions that the High Courts of Madras, Jabalpur and Bombay are pending. However, the Madras High Court has judged that linking social media accounts to Aadhaar number was noy possible.

The TN submission also wrote that companies that own social media sites had not complaint with any law enforcement agency even though they were doing business in India.