No citizen can be prosecuted under Section 66A IT Act: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Wednesday laid down guidelines for the implementation of the Shreya Singhal versus Union of India judgment, which declared Section 66(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 unconstitutional.

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, of 2000 made it a punishable offence for any person to send offensive information using a computer or any other electronic device. The provision also made it punishable for a person to send information that they believed to be false. Even sending emails for causing annoyance, inconvenience, or to deceive or mislead the recipient about the origin of the message was punishable under this section. 

The Supreme Court, by a two-judge bench judgment in 2015, struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, in the case of Shreya Singhal versus the Union of India. The section relating to restrictions on online speech was declared unconstitutional on grounds of violating the freedom of speech guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. It held that online intermediaries would only be obligated to take down content on receiving an order from a court or government authority. 

The People's Union for Civil Liberties(PUCL), which filed the petition, argued before the court on Wednesday that the Union ignored its responsibility even when there were complaints still filed against the citizens in the country long after the section was scrapped in 2015. 

“They could have ensured implementation through the Ministry of Electronics and State Governors,” the petitioner said.

The Union Government, on the other hand, insisted that implementation of Shreya Singhal's judgment is not its responsibility. “State governments must create local regulations for police,” it said. 

After hearing the arguments, the court laid down the following guidelines:

a. It needs no reiteration that Section 66A of IT Act 2000 is violative of the Constitution. In cases where citizens are facing criminal charges for the said section, the reference and reliance on the said section shall stand deleted. 
 

b. Police force, Home Secretary of States, the compliance officers of Union Territories as well as the entire police force shall not complaints in violation of Section 66A.
 

c. In cases where other offences are listed in the complaint along with the said section, only the offence of Section 66A shall stand quashed.
 

d. Whenever any publication, whether government, semi-government or private publishes any information regarding the said section, the readers should be informed that Section 66A is pronounced as violative of the Constitution by the order of the Supreme Court. 

With these observations, the bench of Chief Justice of India UU Lalit, Justices S Ravindra Bhat, and Ajay Rastogi dismissed the case. 

In the last hearings, the court had asked the Union government to take stock of the matter as FIRs and complaints were still being registered using the said section. The court had asked the government to take remedial measures in states where the apex court judgment was still being flouted.