agencies
MUMBAI, July 14: The Bombay High Court today said the recently amended Information Technology (IT) Rules against fake content on social media against the government may be excessive, quipping that one cannot bring a hammer to kill an ant.
A division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale also said it still does not understand the need behind the amendment to the Rules and stated it finds it difficult that one authority of the government is given absolute power to decide what is fake, false, and misleading.
In a democratic process, the court said, the government is as much a participant as a citizen is and hence a citizen has the fundamental right to question and demand answers and the government is duty-bound to respond.
The bench was hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the amended IT Rules. Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India and the Association of Indian Magazines have filed petitions in the high court against the Rules, terming them arbitrary and unconstitutional and claiming that they would have a chilling effect on the fundamental rights of citizens.
The court also questioned who will fact-check the Fact Checking Unit (FCU) that is to be set up under the amended Rules.
"There is an assumption that what the FCU says is undeniably the ultimate truth," Justice Patel said.
On Friday, advocate Gautam Bhatia, appearing for the Association of Indian Magazines, started putting forth his arguments against the Rules. Bhatia told the court that there are less restrictive options available to keep a check on fake content on social media. The bench noted that offline content has some filtration but there is no such fact-checking for social media intermediaries as of now.
"There should be some fact checking. At some level, someone must do fact checking of content on social media. But you (petitioners) may be right to say that this (Rules) are excessive. You cannot bring a hammer to kill an ant," the court said.
Keeping the aspect of excessive aside, the bench said, it is not yet able to understand what was the need for this amendment to the IT Rules
"What is the concern that necessitates this amendment? What is the anxiety behind it? I still do not know," Justice Patel said.
The bench said no person is claiming a fundamental right to lie and all that a citizen is saying is that they have a right to defend the correctness of their statement. |
