HC questions govt’s plan for fact check
MUMBAI : The Bombay High Court on Friday asked the Centre if it was allowed under law to have a statute with “unbound" and ‘limitless’ discretionary authority. The court’s comments came while hearing a petition filed by stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra challenging the Centre’s recent notification on Fact Check Unit (FCU) to identify fake news under the government’s amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. A division bench led by Justices G.S.
Patel and Neela Gokhale said, “The Fact Check Unit (FCU) has got constitutional power to pronounce (what is false, fake and misleading). What is the source of the power? We are not even sure even a civil court could authoritatively pronounce truth or falsity. It may be pronounced based on likelihood or probability.
This is not a binary. It can’t be a binary." On 6 April, the Centre announced amendments to the IT rules, including the provision of a FCU to identify fake or false or misleading online content related to the government. The IT rules, which were amended in April, stated that content marked by the FCU as “fake or misleading" will have to be taken down by online intermediaries if they wish to retain their “safe harbour" (legal immunity against third-party content).
Post this, Kamra petitioned the high court stating the new rules could potentially lead to his content being arbitrarily blocked or his social media accounts being suspended or deactivated, thus harming him professionally. The Editors Guild of India, New Broadcast and Digital Association and Association of Indian Magazines have also filed similar petitions in the matter. The Centre on Friday informed the court that the FCU set forth to identify fake
. Read more on livemint.com
