After vehemently supporting Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament, Jayant Choudhary, MP (Lok Sabha) and General Secretary, Rashtriya Lok Dal today stood up for the freedom of speech and expression on the internet. Raising the issue under Rule 377 in the Lok Sabha, Jayant questioned the Government’s intent in the recent notification of Information Technology Rules.  “The Google’s transparency report for Jul – Dec 2010 reports a 123% increase in demands for content removal by Indian Government and law enforcement. Google removed internet content on 22% of the Indian Government requests as opposed to 87% in USA, 100% in Turkey and so on. This indicates that a number of requests made by the Indian authorities were frivolous and aimed at propagating the ‘Government view’ rather than regulating illegal content” he stated.

The 2011 IT Rules discriminate against the medium of dispersion of information. The Intermediary Guidelines Rules prohibit sharing blasphemous, libelous, and disparaging information. These conditions are purely subjective in nature and they differ from the Press Council’s norms of journalistic conduct. A newspaper article considered ‘blasphemous’ is legal, but the same cannot be reproduced online. The Reasonable Security Practices Rules allow government agencies access to personal information from service providers through written complaints, whereas other crimes require warrants signed by magistrates.

Another draconian aspect of the rules on curbing freedom of speech is its very violation of the spirit of the IT Act, which had removed intermediary liability for content. Jayant Chaudhary stated that such expansive changes should have come through amendments in the main Act rather than being slipped through a subordinate legislation.

Though Internet users are less than 10% of India’s population, but the numbers are increasing significantly. The number of such users in the Media industry is perhaps the largest after the Infotech industry. It is important that the right of ordinary citizens to express themselves is not trampled upon by an over zealous regulatory environment. The new Indian regulations restrict Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology in May, 2011, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria. The list of objectionable content is sweeping and includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.” The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression.

Along with the new content regulations, the government also issued rules governing data security, Internet cafes and the electronic provision of government services. RLD’s National General Secretary and MP, Jayant’s stand brings out the lacunae in the subordinate legislation and points to the need for the government through its policy and legislative framework to enable an important medium like the internet to realize its potential and be accessible to the masses.

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