By Munibar Barui
Recently, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked all the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India to direct all police stations under their authority not to list cases under the annulled Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. The notification by MHA has also asked the States and UTs to inform law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the order issued by the Supreme Court after Shreya Singhal Case.
The notification was released by MHA after Supreme Court of India on July 05, 2021 issued a notice to the Union Government on the basis of a plea filed by Public Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). As per the plea, even after seven years of the law being abrogated, as of March 2021, a total of 745 cases are still awaiting and active before the district courts in 11 states, in which the defendants are being suedby the state for offences under Section 66A of the IT Act. Furthermore, the plea has observed that around 381 cases have been registered in Maharashtra, 295 in Jharkhand and 245 in Uttar Pradesh since the 2015 Supreme Court judgment.
On March 24, 2015, a bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and R.F. Nariman ruled in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India declared Section 66A unconstitutional for “being violative of Article 19(1)(a) and not saved under Article 19(2)”. In part-III of constitution, Article 19(1)(a) gives people the right to speech and expression whereas 19(2) accords the state the power to impose “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of this right. Thus, we can say that this decision was a landmark judicial pushback against state encroachment on the freedom of speech and expression. However, numerous aforementioned state governments still use such provisions to curb dissent and activisms against respective governments. And, only time will tell that how much influence will be seen after issuance of such notifications from MHA. The author works as a reporter under the banner of Sattachintan. He is a writer, an avid aquarist, a tech-savvy individual with a will to do something in life.