The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Central government on a petition alleging that the scrapped Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 was still being used in filing of FIRs and making arrests across the country.
A Bench of Chief Justice U.U. Lalit and Justice Ravindra Bhat directed the Union government to get in touch with Chief Secretaries of states, where cases under Section 66A of IT Act were still being registered and impress upon them to take remedial measures.
The Apex Court granted the Centre three-weeks time to complete the whole exercise.
The notice was issued on a petition seeking directions to implement the verdict in Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, which declared Section 66(A) of the IT Act as unconstitutional.
Section 66A granted wide powers of arrest to the government for ‘grossly offensive’ or ‘menacing’ information shared online. The same was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 for violating the right to freedom of speech and expression.
However, the redundant law was still being applied in a variety of cases in the country.
The petition claimed that Section 66A continued to be used to file FIRs and make arrests across the country.
Filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the plea sought further directions from the Court to ensure that Section 66A was not used to make unconstitutional arrests.
The Apex Court had declared Section 66A as ‘unconstitutional’ in Shreya Singhal’s case, for being violative of right to freedom of speech and expression. Section 66A had granted to the government, wide powers of arrest for offensive information shared online.