New Delhi: Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had a high-level review meeting on Tuesday which was attended by IT secretary R.S. Sharma and additional solicitor-general Pinky Anand, to look into the issue of blocked websites and the controversy it has generated.
During the meeting it was agreed that Internet service providers will be asked to unblock such websites which do not contain pornographic material, including child pornography. “The instant action is basically in obedience to the observation of the Supreme Court where the court asked the department to take action on the list of alleged porn sites provided by the petitioner,” said Mr Prasad.
He said the government is committed to freedom of communication on the Internet. “The government complements the dissemination of ideas on the social media. We have launched the mygov platform seeking views of people of India on the developmental agenda and lakhs of people are participating on this platform,” said the minister. Humorous websites like 9gag, Collegehumour, Playboy were also under the ban.
DoT in the order had asked for “disablement” of URLs of 857 websites under the provision of Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 “as the content hosted on these websites related to morality, decency as given in Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India.”It asked contents of the letter to be kept confidential.
Reacting to the outrage against the move, Mr Prasad, on Monday, said, “I reject with contempt the charge that it is a Talibani government, as being said by some of the critics. Our government supports free media, respect communication on social media and has respected freedom of communication always.” However, the new order is as it is not understood whether the ISPs would have to themselves ascertain which of the total 857 websites had child pornography content.
