Last week, Kerala passed an ordinance that sought to punish anyone “making, expressing, publishing or disseminating” through any mode of co...
Last week, Kerala passed an ordinance that sought to punish anyone “making, expressing, publishing or disseminating” through any mode of communication “threatening, abusive, humiliating or defamatory” matter with a jail term of up to three years.
While Governor Arif Mohammed Khan has given his approval to the ordinance, which amended the Kerala Police Act, the legality of the new provision has come under serious scrutiny.
The ordinance has several problems.
First, it reintroduces in a different language provisions of the Central Information Technology Act that the Supreme Court had struck down in 2015 as violative of the right to free speech and expression. Second, the law seems to provide police powers it does not have – it allows the police to take cognisance of defamation when the Supreme Court has made it clear that it could not do so.
Despite the Opposition slamming the Left Democratic Front government for the ordinance, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has doubled down, stating that there was a void in law after the Supreme Court decision in 2015, which the Centre had failed to fill. He said that the government has received many complaints of intense cyber bullying, which has even harmed the lives of many people.
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