The Delhi High Court today sought responses of the Centre, Facebook India and Google India on a plea by former BJP ideologue K N Govindacharya for recovery of taxes on their income from operations in India. "Issue notice to the respondents. The Centre is to file its reply within four weeks," a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rajiv Shakdher said.
Govindacharya, presently a patron of 'Rashtriya Swabhimaan Aandolan', in a public interest litigation (PIL) petition, has also sought directions to the Centre and the two websites to "ensure proper accounting compliances as per RBI guidelines".
The petition also sought a direction to ensure safety of the data of 50 million Indian users, which were transferred "to the USA and being used for commercial gains in violation of the right to privacy."
"Issue a writ of mandamus ...to ensure verification of all existing users and future new members of social networking websites with instructions not to do agreements with children below 13 years," said the plea, filed through lawyer Virag Gupta.
The plea also sought creation of a national register of persons, indulging in sexual offences and heinous crimes and stopping such persons from joining social networking websites. The petition, which listed the alleged violations of various terms by the websites, also sought a direction to the Centre to ensure that government officers "do not use social networking websites through government computers" as they may pose threat to sensitive data and national computer network.
"As per telecommunication minister's statement in Parliament, the government lost 4 billion USD every year due to cyber-crimes and approximately 90 million government websites were hacked in last 3 years," it said.