In a hearing on comedian Kunal Kamra’s affidavit against the amended IT Rules, the central government on Thursday informed the Bombay High Court that it will not notify the formation of its fact-check unit until July 5, Bar and Bench reported.
The amendment, notified on April 6, says social media companies and other intermediaries must take down content deemed fake by a government fact-check unit. To be precise, intermediaries are not permitted to “host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information in respect to any business of the central government that is identified as fake or false or misleading by such fact-check unit”. Intermediaries that don’t comply will lose their “safe harbour” protection in India.
At the hearing before the bench of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale on Thursday, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh requested the court to list the petition on June 8. However, Kamra’s counsel Darius Khambata and Arti Raghavan opposed this while arguing that the notification could apply to content retrospectively, the report said.
However, the court said the rule cannot be operable for the fact-check unit “till it is notified”. The court will hear the matter on June 8.
Initial reports suggested this fact-check unit will be the Press Information Bureau’s fact-checking unit but Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT, had clarified that this is not mentioned in the amendment. He also assured the press that the new obligations apply only to intermediaries, not the media.
But journalists aren’t buying it. Read this Newslaundry report to understand why they think it’s similar to “censorship”.
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