The Congress Wednesday hit out at the Centre over a new provision included in the draft of amendments to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, calling it a ”surreptitious assault on free speech and vile censorship”. According to the new draft proposal, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has said that any piece of news that has been identified as “fake” by the fact-checking unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) will not be allowed on online intermediaries, including social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Hitting out at the Modi government, the Congress accused it of having converted “IT rules” into “Image Tailoring” rules. “The Indian National Congress strongly condemns this surreptitious assault on free speech and vile censorship. We demand that the new amendment in the Draft IT Rules be immediately withdrawn and that these rules be discussed threadbare in the forthcoming session of Parliament,” Congress media department head Pawan Khera said at an AICC press conference. The Congress said the new proposal was an “an unprecedented move which smacks of the Orwellian Big Brother syndrome”. The new proposal, Khera said, essentially means that PIB’s Fact Checking Unit (FCU) has become a judge in taking down content that might not suit the Modi government’s image. The Modi government, he said, has anointed itself as the judge, jury and executioner of online content regulation. "Bulldozing the press is not new for the Modi government. The popular term Godi Media is now ingrained in the psyche of most Indians. And now, this government wants to make it Godi Social Media. The Congress has, in the past, raised several questions about the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules. which have forgotten all safeguards and protections accorded to social media by the landmark Shreya Singhal case. This new addition to the already dire, drastic and draconian rules, have added one more layer of dictatorial power to crush the vibrant culture of discourse, deliberation and dissent in India,” he said. The Congress said the PIB's FCU was “a habitual offender in converting truth to fakery to save the government’s image. “On November 13, 2022… PIB posted a false tweet calling out Rahul Gandhi’s video asking simple questions whether ‘Railways are being privatised’, and marked it as ‘fake’. In the attached video of the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, Gandhi was being told by a member of the South Central Railway Employees’ Sangh, Bharani Bhanu Prasad, that “Railway stations, workshops, medical centres and establishments will be privatised”. This was in reply to Gandhi’s enquiry about “which part of Indian Railways is being privatised?”. PIB converted a free-wheeling discussion about an important issue concerning the common people and railway workers, into “fake news”. Tomorrow, if these IT Rules are applied, this tweet by a leader of the principal Opposition party, will be taken down, thus resulting in destroying democracy,” he said. “PIB also fact-checked the “fake news” about the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force directing its personnel and their family members to delete 52 Chinese apps from their mobile phones for security reasons. As it turned out, the news was correct and was confirmed by STF IG Amitabh Yash. Within 10 days, the central government banned 59 Chinese apps for similar reasons,” he said.
