HC notice to Facebook, Google on child, teen users
26 April 2013 7:39 AM IST
The Delhi high court has asked for the response of the central government as to how children and teenagers below the age of 18 are being allowed to open an account on social networking sites, including Facebook, even though Indian laws do not permit it. A bench of justices BD Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru also asked US-based social networking sites, Facebook Inc and Google Inc, to answer back on the issue, raised in the PIL for recovery of taxes from the websites on their income from operations in India. The court has asked the government to file its affidavit within 10 days.
‘How children below 18 years can have an agreement with any of the social network sites including Facebook? The Union of India is directed to file an affidavit on the issue within 10 days,’ the bench said. The court also said, ‘Both Facebook Inc and Google Inc are US-based entities and are hereby impleaded as respondents. Notices to be issued to the newly added parties.’
The notices were issued on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed by a former BJP ideologue KN Govindacharya, whose counsel argued that due to non-verification of users, more than eight crore of Facebook users across the world were found to be fake, which the website admitted before the US authority. The counsel further said that the Government of India is not taking any action against the foreign companies which have their Indian operations.
Earlier, HC had issued notices to five central government ministries on Govindacharya’s PIL seeking recovery of taxes from various social networking websites from their income in India.
‘How children below 18 years can have an agreement with any of the social network sites including Facebook? The Union of India is directed to file an affidavit on the issue within 10 days,’ the bench said. The court also said, ‘Both Facebook Inc and Google Inc are US-based entities and are hereby impleaded as respondents. Notices to be issued to the newly added parties.’
The notices were issued on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed by a former BJP ideologue KN Govindacharya, whose counsel argued that due to non-verification of users, more than eight crore of Facebook users across the world were found to be fake, which the website admitted before the US authority. The counsel further said that the Government of India is not taking any action against the foreign companies which have their Indian operations.
Earlier, HC had issued notices to five central government ministries on Govindacharya’s PIL seeking recovery of taxes from various social networking websites from their income in India.
Next Story
