What is Section 66A for UPSC ?
Source : India Today
Polity
What is discuss under What is Section 66A for UPSC ?
- SC observation
- Facts of the news
- What is Section 66A of the IT Act ?
Why in News ?
Supreme Court recently issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the IT Act that was scrapped several years ago.
- SC observed the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.
- The Shreya Singhal Judgment which struck down Section 66A, 1,307 cases were registered under the law.
Key Facts
- The notice came during the hearing of a plea filed by PUCL that pointed out that even after 7 years of the law being
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay struck down, a total of 745 cases are still pending and active before the district courts in 11 states.
- The accused persons are being prosecuted for offences under Section 66A of the IT Act.
- The plea is based on data collated by the Internet Freedom Foundation which has been tracking cases under the provisions which have been declared invalid but are still being used by police to prosecute people.
- What did the court decided ?
- Directed the Centre to file a counter-affidavit in the case.
What is Section 66A of the IT Act ?
- Section 66A of the IT Act was used to punish online communication which is considered grossly offensive, menacing, or to send communication which the sender knows to be false to cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will.
- Simply the provision allowed the police to arrest those who posted offensive content online.
- The provision was struck down by the Supreme court on 24 March 2015.
- The Supreme Court struck down the section in March 2015 after hearing a petition filed against it by Mumbai-based law student Shreya Singhal.
Daily Current Affairs : Click Here