A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Madras High Court (HC) by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (AIADMK) IT wing joint secretary R Nirmal Kumar alleging that the formation of a fact-check unit by the DMK government will censor free speech and have a chilling effect on people. The PIL alleged that action by the government could potentially lead to a situation where no information was available to the public. “The illegal formation of the Fact-Check Unit is a frontal attack on the freedom of speech of the citizens in general and the choice of the persons to run it makes it an attempt to curb the opposition,” the petition claimed. It also said that the fact check unit has been given unilateral powers to decide whether a news article or information is fake or not, without asking for an explanation from the person or media house posting it.
The petition has urged the government to declare the fact-check unit unconstitutional. The PIL also asked the court to ensure that Iyan Karthikeyan, who has been appointed as the Mission Director for the project, be restrained from continuing in the post.
The petitioner pointed out that the Director General of Police (DGP) of Tamil Nadu had issued a statement which was widely circulated in the media, that a social media monitoring team of 203 officials and police personnel will monitor fake news. An affidavit was also filed by the Chief Secretary of the state before theMadras HC to form a ‘special cell’ within the police framework to keep a watch on all the social media with a specific view to identify any defamatory, abusive, filter and otherwise offensive post against any individual /institution. Hence, the petition claimed that the formation of a fact-check unit, while a social media monitoring cell was in place, was illegal.
The Tamil Nadu government had passed an order on October 6 to set up the Fact-Check Unit that will fact-check news related to the state government across all media platforms. According to the Government Order (GO), a Central Task Force will operate under the fact-check Unit and will be led by a Mission Director. DMK’s supporter Iyan Karthikeyan was also appointed as the Mission Director.
The Union Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeITy), on April 7, notified amendments to the 2021 IT Rules and allowed a fact-check entity to decide whether information shared on social media platforms or news media organizations are ‘fake’ or not. The amendment also gave this entity the power to ask social media platforms to remove false, fake or misleading information or news.
Both the digital media rules and the amendment to establish fact check units have been challenged in court. The petitioner says that the Tamil Nadu government has started the fact check unit on the basis of a law and rule that is already under litigation.