SC reserves verdict on pleas against IT Act provisions

The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions challenging constitutional validity of certain sections of the cyber law including a provision under which a person can be arrested for allegedly posting "offensive" contents on websites.
A bench of justices J Chelameswar and R F Nariman reserved their judgement after Government concluded its arguments contending that section 66A of the Information Technology Act cannot be "quashed" merely because of the possibility of its "abuse".
Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said Government does not want to curtail the freedom of speech and expression at all which is enshrined in the Constitution, but the vast cyber world cannot be allowed to remain unregulated.

"The terms like 'illegal', 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing character' are vague expressions and these words are likely to be misunderstood and abused," the bench said.
The court also referred to the judgements, cited by the ASG earlier, pronounced by various courts in England on term 'grossly offensive' and said, "when judicially trained minds can arrive on different conclusions by analyzing the same facts then how can it be said that this term will not be abused."
"These are the terms, incapable of being defined in a precise and objective manner," the ASG replied, adding that there are several other terms in the IPC which suffer from the same problem.

"The term like 'outraging the modesty of a woman' (in IPC) has been construed differently in a given situation by various courts," the law officer said.

At the outset, the ASG referred to various case laws and prevalent practices across the country to regulate 'offensive' contents on websites and other internet mediums.
He said that social networking sites like Facebook has appointed 'grievance officer' for looking into the offensive contents and complaints against them.
"Looking into the number of complaints, it is again an unworkable solution," the bench said.