Comments expressing contrary view or decent humour online cannot be prohibited: Centre

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday informed the Supreme Court that comments in the social media for political reasons, for expressing contrary view or for decent humour cannot be prohibited under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act.

Additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta appearing for the Centre made this submission before a Bench of Justices J. Chalameswar and Rohinton Nariman, examining the Constitutional validity of Section 66A relating to objectionable comments in the social media.

This provision empowers the police to arrest the person concerned for posting annoying comments. The ASG submitted to the court a compilation of comments in the social media, articles and photographs which were prohibited as they were found objectionable and offending religious sentiments.