Editors Guild welcomes Bombay HC verdict striking down Govt’s Fact-Checking Unit

The Editors Guild of India (EGI) has welcomed the verdict of Bombay High Court, striking down IT Amendment Rules 2023 as unconstitutional. The Rules sought to empower the Central government to form a Fact-Check Unit to identify “fake and misleading” information about its own business on social media platforms.

Pronouncing the order, Justice Chandurkar opined that “the amendments are violative of Article 14 and Article 19 of the Constitution of India”. He further opined that the amendments also violated Article 21 and did not satisfy the “test of proportionality”. The matter was referred to the third judge after a division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Dr Neela Gokhale delivered a split verdict in January 2024, with Justice Patel striking down rules as unconstitutional and Justice Gokhale upholding their validity.

The IT Amendments Rules 2023 were notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on April 6, 2023. Along with various regulations concerning online gaming, the amendment also granted authority to a “fact check of the Central Government” to categorise and remove any online content pertaining to “any business of the Central Government” that is deemed “fake, false or misleading”.

The Editors Guild had raised its concerns in its statement dated April 7, 2023, stating that “amendments to the IT rules will have deeply adverse implications for press freedom in the country”.

In June 2023, EDI filed a writ petition before the Bombay High Court, challenging the constitutional validity of this provision for being ultra vires the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act, 2000) and violating the right to freedom of speech and expression. The Guild’s petition was filed along with other petitioners challenging the amendments, by political satirist Kunal Kamra, Association of Indian Magazines, and the News Broadcasters & Digital Association.