MoS IT bats for ‘contemporary’ IT Act, says ‘working on it’

Minister of State for Electronics & IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar was speaking at an open house consultation with stakeholders on the proposed amendments to the IT Rules.

MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Reiterating that the government was open to a self-regulatory framework by social media companies, Minister of State for Electronics & IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that at this point, the IT Ministry will “go ahead” with its proposed appellate committee as the next step in content moderation on social media intermediary platforms. He also underscored the need for a contemporary Information Technology Act given that the government can only tweak the current one in different ways to “get to a safer internet”.

Chandrasekhar was speaking at an open house consultation with stakeholders on the proposed amendments to the IT Rules. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) proposed that “the central government shall constitute one or more grievance appellate committees, which shall consist of a chairperson and such other members as the central government may … appoint”, to be empowered to review, and possibly reverse, content moderation decisions taken by social media companies.

“At this stage, we will go ahead with the Appellate Committee. But I make a solemn commitment to you that if you come back with a self-regulatory framework that works and that meets the test of transparency and accountability, we are very happy to move to that from the moment you are ready with such a framework,” the Minister said.

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He said that the government’s perspective was to ensure four boundary conditions for policy and rule making around the Internet — openness, safety & trust, accountability and complete compliance to the Indian Constitution & legal provisions.

When some attendees at the consultation meeting suggested the government amended the broader IT Act, Chandrasekhar said: “Where we are today is in my opinion a mezzanine stage of where we are in the evolution of our jurisprudence, rules and laws. Very soon we will have an absolutely contemporary law and Act, which will take care of a lot of these issues. IT Act is a 22-year-old Act and, therefore we are bolting on, retrofitting, band-aiding to get to a safer internet, and we need a new contemporary law and we are working on that”.

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Rajeev Chandrasekhar

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