A single-judge bench of the Bombay high court on Friday set aside the IT Amendment Rules, 2023, which allows the central government to form fact-check units.
Mishi Choudhary, founder, Software Freedom Law Centre India, said, “A government can not be the arbiter of truth and use the state machinery for censorship of user-generated content.”
Governments should never be in the fact-checking business as that’s the job of independent media and civil society, Choudhary said. “Ambiguous rules from MEITY and MIB are crippling India’s knowledge revolution. We need clear and light-handed guardrails in addition to laws on privacy and competition that work, not FCUs.”
Read the full report here: Bombay HC sets aside IT amendment rules on govt’s fact-check unit
