SC to consider plea for publicising contents of Citizenship law to curb fake news

The Supreme Court Tuesday agreed to hear on Wednesday the plea seeking a direction to the Centre and three states, including West Bengal, to publicise aims, objectives and the benefits of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to weed out circulation of fake news on the subject.

BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay, who initially sought a CBI or a court-monitored SIT probe into the large scale violence during protests against CAA, later filed the amended PIL seeking a direction to the Centre, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi governments to publicise the factual aspects of the newly enacted CAA.

Deciding to do away with the prayers sought earlier, the amended PIL said the governments be directed to "publish aims, objects and benefits of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 in newspapers, through news channels in order to root out doubts being created by miscreants and to make common man fully aware about benefits of the Act".

The plea also sought a direction to the authorities to take apposite steps to weed out fake news being circulated about the Act.

The matter was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde, which said, "We will take care of the violence".

The bench told Upadhyay that it cannot assume the jurisdiction for anything happening all over the country as the situation and facts may be different.

"We are not saying that the issue raised by you is not important," the bench said, adding, "You can try your luck tomorrow".