Sibal slams govt over IT Amendment Rules

New Delhi, Apr 8 (PTI) Former IT Minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday hit out at the Center over the fact-checking provisions of the IT Amendment Act, saying the government will now decide what is fake, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah said there was no democracy in the country. said. danger.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajiv Chandrasekhar said internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter could lose protection under the safe harbor if they fail to remove content identified as false or misleading by a government-appointed fact-checker.
Reacting to the development, Sibal said, “The PIB will now decide what is fake and what is not and declare it. If online platforms choose to ignore it, they will lose their immunity from prosecution.”
“Now the government has to decide what is fake and what is not! And Amit Shah ji democracy is not in danger,” Rajya Sabha MP said.
“What is at stake is not democracy, but your family” and the idea of dynastic politics, he said, referring to comments by Shah in Uttar Pradesh on Friday about Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s recent comments in the United Kingdom.
Chandrasekhar had said that the IT Ministry would announce an agency to flag misinformation about the government published online.
The minister had said fact-checking work was still going on while issuing the guidelines under the IT Rules 2021.
On Friday, Chandrasekhar dismissed criticism of the change in rules as “deliberate misinformation”.
“No incremental powers – it’s not ‘draconian’. The IT rules already have provisions from October 2022 that mandate social media intermediaries not to carry certain types of content if they want statutory exemption under Section 79 of the IT Act,” Chandrasekhar had said on Twitter.
He said a new reliable fact-checking unit for all government-related content would help social media intermediaries.