Govt to appeal against the court order asking to block content related to IIPM

The government will appeal against the Gwalior district court's order which asked it to block the URLs consisting of content maligning the reputation of business school Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM).

"We will appeal against the order as been asked by the minister (Kapil Sibal). The order was passed without DEITY being made a party to it. We were not issued any notice, the order came to us directly and we did not get an opportunity to respond. We will ask the court to vacate the order and will appeal against the order," an IT ministry source said on the basis of anonymity. The matter is to be heard on February 28.

Last week the Department of Telecom (DoT) had asked the internet service providers to block access to 78 URLs  with 73 consisting of news portals and blogs having content on IIPM and Management (IIPM) and its head Arindam Chaudhuri.

The URLs also included University Grants Commission (UGC) notification saying that IIPM is not a university and does not have the right of conferring or granting degrees as specified by UGC apart from pages of reports written by media firms and bloggers such as Caravan, Outlook Magazine, The Indian Express, The Economic Times, Faking News and The Wall Street Journal.

This move was highly criticised by the media and the industry.

Clearing its stand, the ministry official also said that the ministry has been blamed without checking the facts which is not fair.

"This was a suit for damages and permanent injunction by  filed by IIPM. It has nothing to do with the IT Act. IT department was not the party in the petition," the official added.

While the order was passed on January 29, the websites were blocked on February 14.

"We waited for the parties to go and file appeal but no one did," he further said.