Two new petitions before Bombay High Court against IT Rules Amendment

Two new petitions have been filed before the Bombay High Court challenging the recent amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules 2021)..The petitions filed by Editors Guild of India and Association of Indian Magazines came up for hearing on Wednesday before a division bench of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale which directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) to file its response.In light of this development, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh told the court that the Central government will defer till July 10, the formation of fact checking body empowered under the IT Rules to identify and tag what it considers false or fake online news with respect to any activity of the government. The case will be heard next on July 6. .The two new petitions will be heard along with another petition filed earlier by stand up comic Kunal Kamra.All petitions have challenged the revised Rule 3(1)(b)(v) and Rule 3(i)(II)(A), (C) to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023. The have said that the amendments be held ultra vires Section 79 of the Information Technology Act and Article 14 (right to equality) and 19(1)(a)(g) [freedom to practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business] of the Constitution.The amendment provides for setting up of a fact checking unit that will flag objectionable content.Their contentions are that this will lead to telecom service providers and social media intermediaries to take action against content flagged by the fact checking unit. Failing this, they would lose the safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act..The Central government has opposed the petition stating that false and misleading information could impact the electoral democracy and weaken the trust of citizens in democratic institutions.The division bench however expressed its prima facie opinion that as opposed to the affidavit, the rules did not seem to offer protection to fair criticism of the government like parody and satire.