The Bombay High Court on Monday started hearing arguments presented by Maharashtra along with Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on the IT Amendment Rules, 2021, which were challenged by satirist Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, the Association of Indian Magazines and News Broadcast and Digital Association seeking a stay on the notification of formation of a fact-check unit.
Tie-breaker judge, Justice A.S Chandurkar heard the arguments by Mr. Mehta who stressed that the fact-check unit identifies content as fake and the intermediary but did not remove it. “A disclaimer should be put to inform the users, and if they do neither, the only consequence is that the aggrieved party must join the court where defence is available. Fact check is a known phenomenon. Private companies have it, can the government have it too? The answer is not difficult. This is a very clear law that the government can only say that it is false or misleading about government business. The government is not the arbitrator. The intermediary will take the call. The government will say that as per my records whether the said content is wrong or not.” Mr. Mehta emphasised that the government wanted the users to have remedies for defamatory content. Balancing freedom of speech with others’ rights was essential, he said.
Earlier, the High Court had refused to grant interim stay on setting up a fact-check unit while it assessed the constitutionality of the amendments to the Information Technology Rules. A Single Bench judge, Justice A.S. Chandurkar, the third judge in the case after the split verdict on January 31, said no case was made out for the Union government to continue its statement earlier that it would not notify the fact-check unit pending hearing of petitions against the IT Rules. “The interim applications should now be placed before the referral Bench for appropriate orders,” Justice Chandurkar said.
The court will continue to hear the arguments on Tuesday.
Published - July 01, 2024 10:57 pm IST
