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A legal notice has been served upon Ms. Vijaya Gadde (Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead, Twitter) with respect to the bio section of the Twitter handle “@BanglarGorboMB”, (hereinafter the twitter handle), that described Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial), the Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal, inter alia, as the “protector & guardian of our constitution”.

The notice has been served by Advocate Abhishek Choudhary, practising in the Supreme Court of India. According to him certain misleading facts, having relation to the Constitution of India, being spread through the above-mentioned twitter handle, “this claim of being the protector and guardian of our Indian Constitution is per se false, incorrect, fallacious, inaccurate, unfounded, fictitious, fabricated, invented, fraudulent, spurious and misleading.”

He stated in his notice that, the Constitution of India confers no such title or role upon Mamata Banerjee. As a matter of fact, as per the constitutional scheme of India, no political person, government, public figures or affiliates can claim such a title of being the protector and guardian of our Constitution. Also, a reference to the Constituent Assembly Debates on 16 October, 1949 Part II (Volume X) would clearly suggest that the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India is the sole guardian of every article of the Constitution.

“When the Constitution is passed our Federal Court will be designated as the Supreme Court. It will be the highest court of appeal for all high courts and also the judicial authority for the interpretation of the Constitution. We wish and we hope that the Supreme Court which is going to be the guardian of the Constitution and of the fundamental rights guaranteed therein, will do its function very well and every citizen in India will have the occasion to say that it has protected his rights as a true guardian of this Constitution.”- Excerpt from 17^th October, 1949 Constitutional Assembly Debate as stated in the Legal notice by the Advocate, to make his point clear that the intentions of the framers of the Indian Constitution was to designate Supreme Court as the sole guardian of the Constitution.

The Advocate also cited and made a reference to the judgments pronounced by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in C. K. Daphtary & Ors v. O. P. Gupta & Ors, [1971 AIR 1132]; A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak & Anr,[1988 AIR 1531]; S. Nagaraj & Ors. v. State of Karnataka & Anr. [(1993) Supp. (4) SCC 595] and Ram Jethmalani and Ors. v. Union of India [2011(10) SCALE 753] in this regard.

Further, he conferred that,

“to my utter surprise, twitter has also conferred a verified badge to this twitter handle, thereby authenticating the claims made in this twitter handle. Further to my surprise, the official handle of Twitter Verified (@verified) follows this twitter handle, adding more credibility to the misleading claims.”

Therefore, the legal notice deemed to call upon the following reliefs -

1. Suspend this twitter with immediate effect for spreading false and misleading information,

2. Take down the verification badge from this twitter handle with immediate effect,

3. Explain how this twitter handle was conferred a verified badge, the process of which to my knowledge is stringent and involves strict scrutiny of the documents submitted for verification as well as the information published in the account,

 4. Explain how the platform of twitter was allowed to spread the aforesaid fraudulent, spurious and misleading information, and why a lawful action/ prosecution should not be initiated under the relevant Indian laws on this cause.

5. Explain actions purported to be taken by the defaulters in present case for this ignorance,

6. Tender an unconditional apology to the people of India for the aforesaid ignorance.

The notice further mentioned that, if twitter failed to comply with the request, within 15 days, then the Advocate shall be constrained to initiate legal proceedings against them at their risk, as to costs and consequences.