The IT rules implemented in India in the year 2021 have been in constant controversy. While on the one hand the government has been saying that these rules have been brought with the intention of dealing with the lack of transparency on social media platforms and creating a strong grievance redressal system, social media and news media companies have been seeing these rules as an attempt to curb freedom of expression.
Since the implementation of these rules, they have been legally challenged in the courts of many states of India. The Bombay High Court and the Madras High Court also partially stayed some sections of these rules. The Madras High Court even said that these rules could take away the freedom of the media. After collecting the cases filed across the country against these rules, the matter has finally come to the Supreme Court and the hearing is still pending.
In such a situation, when the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India recently proposed a new amendment in these rules, those who were already expressing apprehensions became more worried.
This proposal issued on January 17 said that if the fact check unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Central Government calls any social media content fake or false, then social media platforms will have to remove that content. The proposal said that if any authorized agency of the Central Government calls any social media content fake, then that content will have to be removed.
The last date for seeking public feedback on the proposal placed on January 17 was fixed as January 25, after the uproar over this issue, now this date has been extended to February 20. Many people also considered the giving of only one week’s time as an indication of the government’s haste.
Organizations like the Editors Guild of India and the News Broadcasters and Digital Association (NBDA) have expressed their concern over this proposed amendment.
The NBDA has said, “This amendment will strangle the fourth pillar of democracy and should be withdrawn.”
The Editors Guild of India has also demanded the removal of this amendment.
Government interference on social media content
Very limited information is available about how much social media content was blocked or removed on the intervention of the Indian government because such orders are not made public.
But social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook release a transparency report every month, which gives an idea of ​​how many demands for removal of content from these platforms came from the government.
Twitter’s transparency report from July to December 2021 said that India was ranked fifth among the countries with the highest demand for removal of content. Japan, Russia, South Korea and Türkiye were in the first to fourth positions.
Similarly, between January and June 2022, the Indian government made 55,497 requests for data from Facebook, of which 51,602 requests were related to legal process and 3,895 were emergency requests.
According to Google’s Transparency Report, since 2011, 15,657 requests have been made by the government to remove content, naming 1,08,186 items.
According to Freedom House, an American organization that researches democracy, political freedom and human rights, the number of government or court orders to block information in India is increasing.
According to Freedom House, in February 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told the Parliament of India that in the year 2021, 6,069 accounts, websites and URLs were banned following government orders. Similarly, the Indian government banned 16,283 websites between 2018 and 2020, including 9,849 websites in 2020.
The reasons given for these bans included ‘inciting anti-India sentiment’, ‘harming public order’, ‘attempting to harm the security of the state and the interest and defence of the sovereignty and integrity of India’.
‘These rules promote censorship’
Against this background, the government’s proposal to amend the IT rules has become more worrying. Access Now is an organization established in 2009 that works towards defending and expanding the digital civil rights of people around the world.
Access Now’s Senior International Consultant and Asia Pacific Policy Director Raman Cheema says that he is very worried about the proposed amendments to the IT rules.
He says, “We have repeatedly said that the IT Rules of 2021 are already dangerously broad and unconstitutional under India’s Constitution and legal framework and directly harm human rights because they promote censorship.”
According to Cheema, these IT rules should have been discussed in the Indian Parliament and should have been passed as a new law, but even if this had happened, this law would not have met the standards of human rights.
‘Attempt to curb freedom of expression’
Cyber law expert Pawan Duggal says that the purpose of India’s Information Technology Act was never to curb people’s freedom of expression, but now an attempt is being made to curb this freedom in an indirect way.
He says, “These draft rules prove that now every intermediary will not only take steps on its own but will also ensure that it can force its consumers not to post anything that has been declared fake by the PIB Fact Check Unit or any other government institution. This is a step taken in the direction of establishing direct control of the government.”
According to Duggal, even if such new rules come, they will definitely be challenged in the court. “It is possible that different PILs may also come up which will question the constitutional validity of these rules.”
Fact-check and PIB
According to the government’s recent proposal, the power to declare any online content as true or false will be given to the PIB fact-checking unit. Concerns are being expressed that if this happens, the government’s control over social media will increase, which will also affect the news media.
But on the other hand, it is also being highlighted that the performance of the PIB fact-checking unit in the matter of fact-checking has often been very poor and there have been many such cases when the fact check done by PIB was declared wrong by government agencies themselves.
Pawan Duggal says that the purpose of PIB is to give more information or publicize the policies of the government and fact checking is not its main work.
He says, “If you want to get fact checking done, then you should create an independent industry body which includes private sector as well as public sector and which decides overall what is fake news and what is not.”
According to Duggal, the right to decide what is fake news and what is not should be with the people or the industry. “The government can only provide assistance. But the government itself is saying that it will tell what is true and what is not, then it can violate the fundamental rights of the people.”
According to him, if a “propoganda agency is made the judge and jury, then it will be a step towards controlling the narrative.” He says that there is freedom of expression in India and people can also disagree with the views of the government and can also criticize them. “Imposing on people that whatever the government is saying is the truth will probably violate the freedom of expression of the people.”
Raman Cheema also says that the most important thing is that PIB is not a fact-checking authority. He says, “The International Fact Checking Network, which certifies fact checkers around the world, has also not listed PIB as a fact-checker.”
According to Duggal, PIB can do fact-checking on behalf of the government, but it is not necessary that everyone sees everything from the government’s point of view, or that the government is right every time.
What is the government’s intention?
The question is constantly being raised as to what is the government’s intention behind bringing the IT rules and now proposing new amendments in them. Raman Cheema says that despite the fact that many parts of these rules have been challenged in the courts and some parts have also been stayed by the courts, the government has “exacerbated the problem rather than solving it”.
He says, “We do not think that these rules have proper legal basis. We consider these rules illegal because the government cannot do this without going to Parliament.”
Cheema believes that what the government is trying to do through these rules does not meet the legal standards of being “necessary, proportionate and legitimate”. Also, he says that these provisions are not necessary.
Cheema says that he does not think that the government has correctly identified the problem, nor does it know what it is trying to fix. According to him, propaganda is already a crime under the IPC in India, so it is not clear what problem the government is trying to solve related to propaganda.
He says, “We do not know what the government is trying to fix because they have not put forward a single paper that clearly indicates what their understanding of the problem is and why they think these rules will fix that problem. These proposals seem to be an attempt to intimidate online media and give themselves more power.”
Recently, the Government of India, using emergency powers under the IT rules, ordered YouTube and Twitter to remove links to the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This information was shared by Kanchan Gupta, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, through some tweets. It is worth noting that no copy of any government order or information about this action was made public.
A major criticism of the IT rules is the lack of transparency in their implementation.
Many people have approached the Supreme Court regarding the removal of the link of the documentary from social media, including well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra.
Raman Cheema says, “The government is directly misusing the IT rules to remove content that may be legitimate and should be online. They are not following due process and maintaining secrecy. India is perhaps the only country among major democracies around the world where the federal government directly orders web censorship of hundreds of links and that too in a secretive manner.”
According to Pawan Duggal, the basic truth today is that no information can be completely blocked. He says, “You can block it in your country but the Internet is a global ecosystem today and no matter what guidelines the government gives, there are so many technologies available through which you can easily watch that banned content sitting at home.”
Raman Cheema says that given the misuse of the existing IT rules and the recent explosion of web censorship orders, it does not seem that these changes are being made with the right intention and spirit. He says, “These are some changes that will be used to influence the functioning of the free press in the remaining year before the general elections in 2024.”
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