Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday expressed displeasure about recent amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules 2021) and remarked that the rules do not prima facie offer protection to parody or satire.
The remark was made during the hearing of a a petition filed by standup comedian Kunal Karma challenging the amendments to IT Rules which empowers the central government to identify fake news against it on social media.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had filed an affidavit before a division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale last week stating that the Union government’s impending Fact Checking Unit may only direct removal of false or misleading information pertaining to government policies and programmes, not satire or artist impression.
The judges said they had gone through the affidavit which says it won’t affect parody or satire. However, the rules don’t seem to offer protection to fair criticism of the government like parody and satire.
“You are not affecting parody, satire, that is what your affidavit says. That is not what your rules say. There is no protection granted. That we will have to see,” Justice Patel remarked.
After perusing the affidavit, the court adjourned further hearing for two weeks.
