Supreme Court notice to states, UTs on cases filed under scrapped section 66A of IT Act

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to all States on continued use of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, despite the top court declaring the provision as unconstitutional in 2015.

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 made posting "offensive" comments online a crime punishable by a jail term of three years.

A bench presided over by Justice R F Nariman sought a response from all States and Union Territories and Registrar General of all High Courts within four weeks in the matter.

The top court said this cannot continue like this, there has to be one proper order in the matter, the bench said.

The court had earlier said that it is "shocking, distressing, and terrible" that Section 66A of IT Act was still being used against citizens for offensive online post, though it was struck down in 2015.

The court was then hearing an application by PUCL, highlighting abuse of the provision.

Responding to apex court's notice on the plea, the Centre told the court that it was the primary duty of States and Union territories to stop registering cases under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act after the provision was quashed by the top court in 2015.

It said 21 states and Union territories have reported compliance with the 2015 judgment in their letters to the Ministry of Information and Technology. However, the law enforcement agencies under the state governments have to ensure no fresh cases were lodged under Section 66A of the IT Act.

It also pointed out ‘police’ and ‘public order’ are State subjects as per the Constitution and prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes and capacity building of police personnel as primarily responsibility of States.

The affidavit by the Union government was filed on July 27.

The government also said the Home Ministry last month asked state governments and police chiefs to immediately revoke cases registered under Section 66A of the IT Act.

In its plea, the NGO stated that as many as 745 cases were still pending and active before the Districts Courts in 11 States, wherein accused persons were being prosecuted for offences under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act.

The plea pointed out that 1,307 new cases were registered after the law was declared unconstitutional. Maharashtra registered the highest number of cases at 381, followed by Jharkhand 291, and Uttar Pradesh 245. Karnataka registered 14 such cases after 2015 and three were were pending over there.

The top court had on March 24, 2015 held that “Section 66A is struck down in its entirety being violative of Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech) and not saved under Article 19(2) (reasonable restrictions).”