New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday while expressing serious concern over the fall in the female sex ratio, asked the nodal agency set up by the Centre to take steps to prevent sex determination advertisements on the internet.
Passing this order a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said “The expert committee under the nodal agency will take appropriate steps so that the mandate of the PNDT Act (Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994) is not violated and the female sex ratio which has fallen in the country shall not further fall down.”
The bench passed this order on a batch of petitions by NGO Sabu George and others after hearing senior counsel Sanjay Parikh, appearing for the petitioners and senior counsel Abhishek Singhvi and K.V. Viswanathan, appearing for the major search engines and Ms Pinky Anand Additional Solicitor General for the Centre.
Search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo told the court that they would not sponsor any advertisement on pre-natal sex determination tests. They said “if we discover something objectionable we will refer it to the nodal officer and remove the contents if the nodal officer ask us to do so.”
On behalf of search engines it was made clear that objectionable content on sex determination will be removed within 36 hours of report from nodal officers.
