
The government told the Supreme Court on Monday that it cannot ban pornography except child porn. During the hearing in the apex court on a petition to pornographic sites, the Centre said the government cannot do moral policing. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told an SC bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu that the government would ban child pornography and not be a totalitarian state by banning all porn. "We are talking about digital India as an inclusive program. The Prime Ministers website has a mygov.in platform, and he has asked people to give inputs on his independence day speech, and Swachh Bharat. Crores of people can congregate there." Attorney General “Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching (pornography) within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty),” Dattu remarked. "There are many issues and we don’t want to do moral policing. There is also difficulty: the websites can change their names and change their website, and it becomes difficult," Rohatgi said The government had earlier put the onus on Internet Service Provider to identify which child pornography websites that need to be banned. Meenakshi Arora, lawyer for Internet Service Providers, said ISPs want clear instructions from the government as to which websites need to be blocked. The department of telecom had banned 857 websites as the content on those websites were against constitutional provision regarding morality and decency.