Twitter has roughly over 48 million monthly active users across India.

Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government to contest some of the ban orders on tweets and accounts, raising tensions in the most important international market.

According to a report, Twitter's complaint, which was filed on Tuesday before the Karnataka High Court in Bengaluru, says that New Delhi misused its authority by directing Twitter to arbitrarily and disproportionately delete a number of tweets from its platform.

The contested notices and blocking orders were issued according to Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. In the interest of national security, the clause permits the government to limit public access to certain information.

In addition, some ban orders "relate to political information uploaded by official accounts for political parties," Twitter said in the complaint.

In its argument, the microblogging company said “Blocking of such information is a violation of the freedom of speech guaranteed to citizen-users of the platform. Further, the content at issue does not have any apparent proximate relationship to the grounds under Section 69A,”

The company also claimed that New Delhi had threatened to file criminal charges against its senior compliance officer in India if it did not comply with directives.

The case follows a difficult year and a half for Twitter in India when it was requested to remove hundreds of accounts and tweets, many of which were deemed offensive because they criticized the policies of the current Indian government and leadership.

Twitter has collected over 48 million monthly active users across India. Over the last year and a half, Twitter has partly agreed with the demands but has fought back against many of the objections. Under India's new IT regulations, which went into force last year, Twitter has limited space to contest removal requests individually, and failure to comply may result in legal action against its compliance officer in India.

Any significant social media company was obliged by the new IT regulations to employ a chief compliance officer, nodal contact person, and resident grievance officer to handle local complaints.

"It is everyone's obligation to follow the laws enacted by Parliament." India's IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav commented when asked about the same, in a report.

As per a report by TechCrunch, on May 24 of last year, the Delhi Police, which falls under the jurisdiction of India's central government, visited two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in the neighboring state of Haryana — to inquire about Twitter's rationale for labeling one of the tweets by a spokesperson for the ruling party as "manipulated media."

In response, the Delhi police said at the time that they had received a complaint regarding the categorization of the spokesperson's tweet and had visited Twitter India's headquarters to notify the company's head of the investigation. The police said in a statement that Twitter India's managing director's responses on the matter were "extremely vague."

Twitter had "concerns over the use of intimidation techniques by the police in response to the enforcement of our worldwide Terms of Service, as well as fundamental aspects of the new IT Rules," according to a statement.