The Indian National Congress has been put in quite a spot recently after MRT Music, the firm that holds the copyrights of the soundtracks of 'KGF Chapter 2', filed a case against the party. The reason? The main opposition party used these songs from the movie in their marketing videos for the 'Bharath Jodo Yatra' featuring Rahul Gandhi, without its permission.
The controversy erupted after Congress leader Jairam Ramesh posted the videos on his social media handle. Unhappy with the turn of events, the Bengaluru-based firm registered a complaint against Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Supriya Srinate and Rahul Gandhi with the Karnataka police.
Later, the firm also filed a suit against the party stating its copyright has been infringed upon. It also sought a permanent injunction against the INC and its leaders from using its copyrighted music.
Following this, a dedicated commercial court for Bengaluru Urban District on Monday directed micro-blogging site Twitter to block the handles of the Indian National Congress (INC) and its 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' till the next date of hearing. Also, the court ordered removing three tweets posted by the party.
The Twitter handles are '@INCIndia' and '@BharatJodo'.
"Plaintiff has specifically produced CD showing the side-by-side file i.e., the original version of his copyrighted work with that of the illegally synchronised version. These prima facie materials available before this court at this stage establish that if the same is encouraged, the plaintiff who is in the business of acquiring cinematography films, songs, music albums... will be put to irreparable injury and further same leads to encouraging the piracy at large," the court said in its order.
The court also appointed a commissioner to audit and preserve the evidence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
(With inputs from PTI)