Bombay HC delivers split verdict in Fact Check Unit case
The Bombay High Court on Wednesday gave a split verdict on petitions challenging the amendments to the Information Technology Rules that allow the Centre to set up a ‘Fact Check Unit’ to keep a tab on ‘fake news’ that are frequently spread on social media. “The impugned amendment makes the government’s chosen FCU the sole authority to decide what piece of user-content relating to the undefined and unknowable ‘business of the government’ is or is not fake, false or misleading,” Justice Patel held in his order on Wednesday. There is no assurance of that either and they should have been in place by now if there was such an intent.” However, Justice Gokhale held: “No content is restrained by the impugned rule, unless the content is patently false, untrue and is communicated with ‘actual malice’, i.e., with knowledge of its falsehood and with reckless disregard for the truth, and is deceptively passed off as a statement of truth. Aggrieved by the notification, stand-up comic Kunal Kamra moved the Bombay HC on 10 April, petitioning that the new rules announced by the Centre could potentially lead to his content being ‘arbitrarily’ blocked or his social media accounts being suspended or deactivated, harming him professionally.
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