Five months after quashing Section 66A, Supreme Court suggests law to curb social media misuse

If you were one the people that tweeted #OnlineAzadi after the Supreme Court scrapped Section 66A of the Information Technology Act in March, and believed you would enjoy absolute freedom of speech online, think again.

The Supreme Court on Thursday observed that there is a necessity for a new law that will regulate social media in order to curb defamatory messages circulated online, according to a report by The Times of India .

The statement came in response to senior advocate L Nageswara Rao, who said that a message about him being involved in a case of Section 376 of IPC , i.e. rape was circulated on WhatsApp, states the report. The bench also said that Parliament should bring a new law to reduce the misuse  of social media.

The Times of India  quotes the bench as saying, “Section 66A was quashed because it was not properly drafted and was vague. We can ask Parliament to bring a new law. We have earlier also suggested to Parliament to enact a law on other issues and we can suggest it to pass a legislation on this issue also.”

Back in March, when Section 66 A was scrapped, the Supreme Court had said that “Section 66A is so widely cast that virtually any opinion on any subject would be covered by it, as any serious opinion dissenting with the mores of the day would be caught within its net. Such is the reach of the section and if it is to withstand the test of constitutionality, the chilling effect of free speech would be total.”

However in April, there were reports about how the government could bring back Section 66A in a different avatar by working on a new legislation. Firstpost writer Wajahat Qazi had also argued that the striking down Section 66A will guarantee absolute protection. He wrote that despite the force of law behind thejudgement, it does not entirely safeguard individual rights such as freedom of speech. The state and the political class can find ways and means to obscure power and harass an individual who exercises free speech.

In the not-so-distant past, we saw the case of Jagendra Singh, a journalist from Uttar Pradesh, who  was allegedly burnt to death for maintaining a Facebook page that had several reports on the state’s dairy development minister Ram Murti Verma.

While the impact of the Supreme Court’s statement remains to be seen, it could spark more protests like the ones seen before the Section 66 A judgment.