TikTok: Supreme Court refuses urgent listing of plea against HC order

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna said the plea will come up for hearing in due course of time. Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Chinese company ByteDance, said that there are over billion download of the app and the Madurai bench of MHC has passed an ex-parte order. “No urgent listing. The matter will come up in due course of time,” the bench said.

The Madurai bench of Madras High Court on April 3, had directed the Centre to ban mobile application ‘TikTok’ as it voiced concern over the “pornographic and inappropriate contents” being made available through such apps.

It directed the media not to telecast video clips made with TikTok. The app allows users to create short videos and then share them.

It had asked the government if it would enact a statute on the line of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in the US and posted the matter for further hearing on April 16.

The high court had passed the interim order Wednesday on a public interest litigation (PIL) petition which sought to ban Tik Tok app on ground that it allegedly contained contents that “degraded culture and encouraged pornography”.