The Supreme Court on Friday directed that all petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, under which arrests can be made for posting objectionable comments on Facebook and other social networking sites, be listed for final hearing on December 2.
A Bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and S.A. Bobde, after hearing senior counsel Soli Sorabjee for the petitioner Shreya Singhal, Prashant Bhushan for Common Cause and Sanjay Parikh for People’s Union for Civil Liberties, said the matter would be decided expeditiously.
In her petition, Ms. Singhal brought to the notice of the court an incident in Mumbai in 2012 when Shaheen Dadha, a 21-year-old girl, was arrested for questioning on Facebook the shutdown in Mumbai after the death of a political figure. This was ‘liked’ and shared by her friend, Ms. Renu, who was also arrested by the Thane police in Maharashtra.
Mr. Sorabjee submitted that Section 66A of the IT Act was unconstitutional. Mr. Parikh sought a direction that no arrests should be made without following the guidelines. The Bench, however, said it would dispose of the matter finally in December.
