The Bombay High Court has directed the Union Government to file its reply to a petition filed by the Association of Indian Magazines by June 20, which challenges the fact check amendments to the IT Rules, 2021, and has extended the Government’s undertaking of not constituting its fact check unit until July 10.

The court has listed this matter for final hearing on July 6.

The IT Amendment Rules, 2023 empower a “fact check unit” of the Central Government to identify “fake or false or misleading” information about “any business of the Central Government”.

The fact-checking body is proposed to be set up to cross-check and verify any-and-all information about the government present on social media platforms.

The government on April 27 had told the Bombay High Court that it would not notify the body for fact-checking government-related news till July 5.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology made this submission in response to a plea filed by political satirist Kunal Kamra, who challenged an April 6 notification that spoke about setting up a fact-checking unit. The next date of hearing is June 8.

The amendment threatens online free speech in India, as it potentially makes the Union Government the final arbiter of all online speech that relates to it, Tanmay Singh, the senior litigation counsel for the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), told ET. Digital rights organisation IFF is providing legal assistance to the Association of Indian Magazines as well as to Kamra in their challenge to the notification.

The fact check unit appointed by the Government will have the power to flag any online information about the Union Government as “fake, false or misleading”, and can order digital intermediaries to immediately censor such speech, Singh further said.

This is unconstitutional, and this case is an important fight for the freedom of online speech in India, he added.

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