 "IT Rules")
The Centre on Wednesday informed the Bombay High Court (HC) that it was extending till July 10, its statement of not setting up a fact-check unit (FCU) to identify fake content online.
On Wednesday, a division Bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale were informed that two new petitions, one by the Editors Guild of India and the other by the Association of Indian Magazines, were filed challenging the FCU rules.
Earlier in April this year, the union government had informed the HC that it would not set up the fact-checking unit till July 5. The HC was hearing a petition filed by stand-up comic Kunal Kamra challenging the constitutional validity of the new rule under the Information Technology Act.
The HC said that it will hear all three petitions on July 6 and 7.
"In view of the dates fixed for hearing, additional Solicitor-General Anil Singh says that the statement made earlier by the Centre shall stand extended till July 10," said the HC.
The three petitions sought the court to declare the amended rules unconstitutional and direct the government to restrain from acting against any individual under the Rules.
More From This Section
On April 6 this year, the Union government promulgated certain amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, including a provision for FCU to flag fake, false and misleading online content related to the government. The new rule requires intermediaries to exercise due diligence once the FCU identifies content as 'untrue' or risk losing ‘safe harbour’ protection under section 79 of the IT Act from liability of facing prosecution in certain cases, over what third parties post on their platforms.
The Union government, in its affidavit filed in Kamra’s petition, said that the “role of the fact-checking unit is restricted to any business of the Centre, which may include information about policies, programme, notifications, rules, regulations, implementation thereof, etc.”
The Centre said, "The only change the new rule makes is to make the intermediary preliminarily responsible to check what is stated, without any obligation to either take it down or block it".
