SC judgement on section 66A: A win for free speech

The Supreme Court's judgement on Tuesday striking down section 66A of the Information Technology Act is a big win for freedom of speech advocates. The section had been more often misused by the political class and fundamentalists of all hues.

Look at the following examples:

a. Prof Ambikesh Mohapatra of Jadavapur University was arrested by West Bengal police officials in 2012. His crime : Forwarding an email joke on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

b. Two young girls in Mumbai arrested for critisicising shutting down of Mumbai following the death of Shiv Sena patriarch Balasaheb Thackrey.

c. An 18-year-old, Class XI student arrested in UP for a Facebook post on state minister Azam Khan.

d. A businessman from Puducherry arrested after posting some tweets on Karti Chidambaram, son of former Union Finance minister P. Chidambaram.

While there are several more such examples, freedom of speech advocates had been crying hoarse on the way the Act was being misused. The unfortunate thing was that both the UPA and NDA were on the same page as far as not scrapping this controversial provision of the IT Act was concerned.

While in 2013 itself the SC had barred arbitrary arrests of anybody accused under Sec 66A of the IT Act without taking the consent of senior law enforcement officials, today's judgement declaring it to be unconstitutional and violative of Article 19 (1) (a) is likely to provide clarity on the whole topic.

What this means is that a tweet or a Facebook post or a forwarded email will not land you in jail.

At the time of writing it wasn't clear whether the government was likely to appeal the SC's judgement. For now free speech advocates and democracy, which is predicated on this, have won.