Challenge to IT rules: HC reserves verdict as Centre points to ‘very dangerous era’

Citing recent deepfake videos of Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the central government told the Bombay High Court today that its plan to set up a fact-check unit would therefore be in public interest. 

As reported by Livelaw, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said we currently live in a “very dangerous era”. The court subsequently reserved its order.

The high court was hearing petitions challenging an amendment to the IT Rules which allows the government to identify “fake news” about itself on social media. The petitions were filed by Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, and the Association of Indian Magazines. 

On January 31, the court had delivered a split verdict in the case and subsequently said a third judge – Justice DK Upadhyaya – would hear the pleas from February 28.

In the high court today, Mehta said the purview of the unit was not criticism of the government or its programmes but “only about facts”. Given the split verdict, he said it was “not fair to deprive people at large of the truth”. “At the behest of private individuals can we stay this and cause public mischief?” he asked.

Kamra’s lawyer Navroz Seervai replied that a “nanny state must be rejected where the government knows best”. Mehta said, “It is not that the common man is not intelligent. It is just that truth should be available. It is a responsible government, not a nanny government.”

The amendment was notified on April 6, 2023 and said social media companies and other intermediaries must take down content that the fact-check unit deems fake. In September, the Bombay High Court agreed that the amendment gives the government “unfettered power” in the absence of any “guidelines and guardrails”.

Newslaundry has reported at length on the controversies surrounding the amendment. Read here.

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