In 2008, IT law was supported by all parties

Even as the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act on Tuesday, the ruling BJP and opposition Congress blamed each other for having enacted the draconian provision. But parliamentary records show that the amended IT Act was passed without any debate and unanimously by all political parties in 2008. Unnerved by the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, they addressed their own perceptions of national security needs and gave short shrift to civil rights online.

How was the IT Act passed in 2008?
In 2008, the amended IT Act was passed within 10 minutes in the Lok Sabha by paranoid MPs. This was reminiscent of how the Indian Telegraph Act was enacted in 1885 by the British Raj, which, under the shadow of the 1857 uprising, gave sweeping powers to the executive to control rather than to govern.

How did politicians cover their tracks on Tuesday?
And so Tuesday was a day of flip-flops for major political parties. The Congress party, which brought the Act in 2008, called for re-examining the Act, admitting it was poorly drafted and was the reason behind harassment and arrests of youth countrywide.

What did the ruling BJP have to say?
Meanwhile, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the SC judgment, claiming that the party had resolutely taken a stand against censorship and blockade of social media. This was in stark contrast to its stand over the past three months, when the apex court was hearing the case; then, the NDA government had told the court that Section 66A was necessary to “regulate the use of cyberspace”. The Telecom and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was in favour of rephrasing the rules to address the apex court's concerns while pleading that the provision be retained.

On Tuesday, though, Prasad claimed that the NDA government had never endorsed the previous UPA government's attempt to gag social media. Prasad tried to show that it was the Congress-sponsored provision that has been struck down by the Supreme Court. “We have in writing confirmed that we stand for freedom of speech and expression, while the previous UPA government tried to make this law an instrument to curb dissent, satire and anything else which did not suit it,” he said, vowing that “we cannot set a different standard of public morality for speech and expression in cyberspace from speech in other media and in the public domain.”

What did Congress say about absolute freedom of expression?
Congress chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala asked the government to re-examine the issue threadbare and “strike an appropriate balance by upholding freedom of expression, democratic dissent and right to criticize on one hand and prevent abuse/hounding of groups/individuals through obscene/incorrigibly false information and deter unbridled defamation in cyberspace.”

He said the Supreme Court had set aside Section 66A to prevent authorities from killing dissent in the online space, perhaps not finding as sufficient the various safeguards the Congress government had weaved into that section, including a condition that the arrests be made only after examination and after clearance obtained from the IG or an SP level officer.

Surjewala explained that this Act came into effect in 2008, when social media was still evolving. His colleague and lawyer Kapil Sibal also agreed that allowing the government to regulate the internet is a recipe for disaster. But he added that absence of any regulation will also create problems. “I am for freedom of expression, but there are no absolutes in life. Limitless freedom contains within it the seeds of conflict,” he said.