The Delhi High Court on Thursday disposed of a plea by the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) challenging the suspension of its Instagram account, after the Centre told the court that it would decide the student outfit’s pending appeal before the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) within a month.

The appeal was filed before the GAC on August 12 but is yet to be decided.

Under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, the GAC shall deal with appeals before it “expeditiously” and “shall make an endeavour to resolve the appeal finally within thirty calendar days from the date of receipt of the appeal.”

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The Centre, through its counsel, informed Justice Amit Mahajan that the appeal would be disposed of in four weeks. Taking this into consideration, the court disposed of the plea without issuing any further directions.

SFI’s Instagram account, created in 2018 as the official social media platform of SFI Delhi, was permanently disabled by Instagram on July 5, citing a violation of the platform’s community guidelines.

At the time of the suspension, the account had 13,000 followers. According to SFI, the disabling of the account “consequently deprived (SFI) of an important and established medium through which they communicated their activities, student-centric campaigns, issues and concerns, and engaged with students and the wider public.”

Several petitions have reached the Delhi HC seeking directions to the GAC to decide appeals against the blocking or suspension of social media accounts. In most such cases, however, the court has refrained from directing that the appeals be disposed of.

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In May this year, though, the Delhi HC directed the GAC to decide an aggrieved content creator’s appeal “expeditiously,” after it had remained pending for more than two months.

Similarly, in an order on July 28, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court directed that a social media user’s appeal be considered and disposed of within four weeks. The user had moved court after his appeal remained pending with the GAC for over a month.