MHA to set up panel to address security concerns folllowing SC

The Home Ministry has set up a high-level committee to examine how to accommodate national security concerns after the Supreme Court struck down the Article 66A of the Information Technology (IT Act).
The committee, headed by Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Home Ministry Ashok Prasad, will analyse the "void" created by scrapping of Article 66A of IT Act in the legal space to deal with national security issues and what steps could be taken to accommodate all these concerns, official sources said.
There is unanimity among security agencies that words like 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing' were being wrongly interpreted by law enforcement agencies.

But some provision is required to check the propagation of material that may endanger national security like the ISIS propaganda in the Internet, sources said.
Sources indicated that insertion of a special provision by amending the existing IT Act to allay apprensions of the security agencies cannot be ruled out.
Representatives of Intelligence Bureau, National Investigation Agency and Delhi Police will also be part of the committee.

The committe will submit its report within one month and then it will be shared with Ministries of IT and Law.
On March 24, in a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court had struck down the controversial provision in the cyber law providing for arrest for posting allegedly offensive content on websites saying, it is "unconstitutional" and has a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech and expression.

The apex court also held that the expressions used in section 66A of the Information and Technology Act, which had been used by various administrations against inconvenient posts in the cyber space, are "completely open-ended and undefined".
This controversial section of Act provided for up to three years of jail for those found to be sending offensive messages using his or her computing device.
There have been quite a few cases where people were arrested under this controversial law for their 'objectionable' comments on social media.