Supreme Court strikes down Section 66A of IT Act

[vgane]

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Welcome this judgment! Else these was a damocles sword hang around any body posting any stuff which might look offensive to the aggrieved party...Threat of danger to individual liberty and freedom of expression! Real democracy at work with this marvelous piece by the Supreme court!

[h=1]Supreme Court strikes down Section 66A of IT Act which allowed arrests for objectionable content online[/h]
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Section 66A of Information Technology Act as unconstitutional and struck it down.

This section had been widely misused by police in various states to arrest innocent persons for posting critical comments about social and political issues and political leaders on social networking sites.

The court said such a law hit at the root of liberty and freedom of expression, two cardinal pillars of democracy.


The court said such a law hit at the root of liberty and freedom of expression, the two cardinal pillars of democracy. The court said the section has to be erased from the law books as it has gone much beyond the reasonable restrictions put by the Constitution on freedom of speech. The Supreme Court said section 66A was vaguely worded and allowed its misuse by police.

The court, however, upheld the validity of section 69B and the 2011 guidelines for the implementation of the I-T Act that allowed the government to block websites if their content had the potential to create communal disturbance, social disorder or affect India's relationship with other countries.

However, the court watered down section 79 of the I-T Act making it further difficult for the police to harass innocent for their comments on social network sites.


Supreme Court strikes down Section 66A of IT Act which allowed arrests for objectionable content online - The Times of India

 

[sarang]

The national herald case against gandhis was also heard today. Kapil sibal was arguing for about an hour, and the judge asked some pointed questions. It went like this:
Judge: what is this company doing?
Sibal: charity, my lord.
Judge: what charity?
Sibal: social service, secularism
Swamy interjecting: why don't you tell the judge, the company has received IT notice?
Kapil: that is because of your long arm!

Next hearing will be after a month. Sibal to finish his piece, then swamy, then witnesses! At this rate several years! America Indian gone missing must also be located and brought here.

 

[vgane]

 

[vgane]

Another biting one!

 

[vgane]

A powerful combo of a socially active and responsible law student along with 2 judges who went by the law book to create history!!

Read this:

[h=2]Dinnertime dissent[/h] In November 2012, Shaheen Dhada, a 21-year-old from Palghar, a suburban Mumbai settlement, posted a comment on Facebook. It simply questioned why India’s financial capital had been shut down in the wake of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s death. Her friend, Rinu Srinivasan, approved of the post and “liked” it on Facebook.


After a local Shiv Sena activist filed a complaint, both women were booked under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act and arrested.



Meanwhile, in Delhi, another 21-year-old, Shreya Singhal was fuming over the detentions and, after a dinnertime discussion, decided to follow her mother’s suggestion to file a public interest litigation against the law. It helped that her mother, Manali Singhal, is a supreme court laywer, and her grandmother was a judge.



It took Singhal, who has an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from the University of Bristol, and is now a law student at Delhi University, about a week to file the petition. Later, some serious legal heavyweights fought Singhal’s case in court, including former attorney general Soli Sorabjee.

SC has upheld citizens' right of freedom of speech & expression: Shreya Singhal, Petitioner #Sec66A pic.twitter.com/dMqN6ChtNw
— ANI (@ANI_news) March 24, 2015
​

“I am ecstatic,” Singhal said on Tuesday. “It was grossly offensive to our rights, our freedom of speech and expression and today the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
[h=2]Nariman on point[/h] Even by the standards of the remarkable legal talent abound in India’s supreme court, Rohinton Fali Nariman is an exception.

In 1993, when Nariman was to be designated a senior advocate at the country’s highest court, the then chief justice M N Venkatachaliah had to amend the rules that set the minimum age at 45 years. Nariman was only 37.


In 2013, only 18 months after he was appointed solicitor general, Nariman swiftly quit as the government’s second most senior legal officer, purportedly after a series of disagreements with the then law minister. The straight-speaking lawyer—and son of another legal stalwart, Fali Sam Nariman—reportedly possesses a “mercurial temper” and a weakness for classical Western music.
Nariman is also an ordained Parsi priest from the Bandra Agiary in Mumbai. In a blog post last year, former supreme court judge Markandey Katju described the ordination:

When Rohinton was 12 years old he was sent to the Parsi priests school, where he had to stay for 28 days in the agiari (the fire temple), in seclusion and was not allowed to meet anyone or talk to anyone. He had to pray 5 times a day and memorize the 72 chapters of the Zendavesta, the Parsi holy book.

On Tuesday, 59-year old Nariman, alongside justice J. Chelameswar, delivered a 123-page-long ruling (pdf) where they ruled Section 66A as “unconstitutional” and observed that it “uses completely open-ended, undefined and vague language.”


​

Setting aside the Modi government’s assurance that the law would be “administered in a reasonable manner,” the justices pithily noted: “Governments may come and Governments may go but Section 66A goes on forever.”



Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center India, described the duo as “rockstar judges.”



“They are committed to the constitutional principles, able to adapt with the changing times, deftly understand technology and will provide a conducive business environment for a digital India to become a reality,” she said in an emailed statement.

Meet the upstart law student and the rockstar judge who freed India?s internet ? Quartz

 

[V.Balasubramani]

Section 66A quashed: Citizens can still be arrested for online posts

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court's decision to strike down Section 66A of I-T Act may infuse social network site addicts with a sense of unrestricted freedom of expression, but it is a deja vu situation for them as indiscrete postings in social network sites could still invite arrest under similar provisions of Indian Penal Code.

In most of the cases slapped against persons for posting offensive views on social network sites, the police had invariably invoked Sections 153 and 505 of the IPC along with Section 66A of I-T Act, which is a bailable offence. It is the invoking of additional IPC sections which had allowed the police to arrest the persons for offensive posts.

Section 153 and 153A provides for registration of a case against a person who gives a statement either in writing or orally that incites communal riots or provokes communal tension and enmity between communities. IT is punishable with imprisonment from 6 months to one year with fine. Section 505 punishes persons who spread rumour through their statement to cause public disorder with an imprisonment up to 3 years

Read more at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Section-66A-quashed-Citizens-can-still-be-arrested-for-online-posts/articleshow/46683200.cms