The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Bombay high court on Thursday accepted the ‘tie-breaking’ opinion of Justice Atul Chandurkar declaring the 2023 amendments to the IT Rules as ‘unconstitutional’.
The amendments allowed allowed the Union government to establish fact check units (FCUs) to identify “fake and false” information circulating on social media platforms
Justice Chandurkar was appointed as a ‘tie-breaking’ judge by the Bombay high court’s chief justice after a division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Neera Gokahle delivered a split verdict on the matter in January.
While Justice Patel had struck down the rules entirely, Justice Gokhale had upheld their validity.
In his September 20 judgement, Justice Chandurkar, agreeing with Justice Patel, said that the amendments failed the “test of proportionality” and unfairly differentiated between online and print content, violating Article 19(1)(g).
“I am of the opinion that the amendments are violative of Article 14 and Article 19 of the constitution of India,” he said, adding that they also violate Article 21.
Further, the judge noted that the expressions ‘fake, false or misleading’ are “vague”.
Since Justice Patel retired in April this year, the matter was placed before a bench of Justices Gadkari and Gokhale which pronounced the final verdict today and struck down the amendments with a ‘majority view’ holding it unconstitutional, LiveLaw reported.
Under the amended rules, social media platforms like X, Instagram, and Facebook were required to remove or label content flagged as fake by the government’s FCU.
Defending the move, the Ministry of Information and Technology had underlined that fact-checking by government agencies would contain potential harm to the public as “authentic information” related to the government’s business will be ascertained and disseminated.
The amendments were challenged by several parties, including stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra, the Editors Guild of India and the Association of Indian Magazines.
The petitioners argued that these rules unfairly exposed intermediaries to liability, violating their protections under the IT Act. Additionally, they claimed that the rules infringed upon citizens’ right to equal protection and free speech, as guaranteed by the Indian constitution.
In his plea, Kamra had expressed concerns that these rules could be used to arbitrarily censor his content, leading to blocked or removed posts, or even suspended or deactivated social media accounts.