Observing that in a democracy citizens have the right to question the government actions and the government is bound to respond to their questions, the Bombay high court on Friday sought to know from the Centre why it is assigning absolute and unquestionable powers to a fact checking unit (FCU).
The HC’s observation came while hearing petitions filed by satirist Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India, the Association of Indian Magazines, and the News Broadcasters and Digital Association, which had challenged the amended Information Technology Rules that empower the FCU to identify “fake or misleading” content about the Central government and its policies on social media platforms and direct the intermediaries to take it down.
Senior advocate Arvind Datar, representing…
