LLM Group 3 Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Information Technology Cyber Laws 2024-25 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: "Explain" means explain WHY, so the reasons carry the marks. Set out the text of section 66A and what made it dangerous in practice (cognizable, three years, used against political comment). Then the constitutional framework the Supreme Court applied, and each ground of invalidity with the precedent behind it: article 19(2) is exhaustive, the proximity test for public order (Ram Manohar Lohia, Rangarajan), vagueness (K.A. Abbas, Kartar Singh), overbreadth and chilling effect (R. Rajagopal, Reno v. ACLU), and why neither reading down nor an assurance of fair use could save it. Say which arguments FAILED (article 14). Close with what happened next, which most answers miss: continued prosecutions, the Supreme Court's order of 12 October 2022, and Parliament's omission of the section with effect from 30 November 2023.

The provision and why it was challenged

Section 66A was inserted by the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, in force from 27 October 2009. It punished any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device:

The decision and the constitutional framework

Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, (2015) 5 SCC 1, was decided on 24 March 2015 by J. Chelameswar and R.F. Nariman JJ., Nariman J. writing. The Court held: "Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is struck down in its entirety being violative of Article 19(1)(a) and not saved under Article 19(2)."

The starting point is the structure of article 19. Article 19(1)(a) guarantees freedom of speech and expression, described in Romesh Thappar v. State of Madras, [1950] SCR 594, as lying at the foundation of all democratic organisations. Article 19(2) permits reasonable restrictions only in the interests of eight subjects: sovereignty and integrity of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation, and incitement to an offence. A restriction that does not fall within one of these cannot be saved, however desirable its object.

Section 66A failed that test. It did not require that a message have any tendency to cause public disorder; a message that merely annoyed or inconvenienced one person was an offence. Nor was it saved by the other heads: it was not confined to defamation (it did not concern injury to reputation), nor to decency or morality (it caught messages that were not obscene), nor to incitement (it required none).

Ground two: vagueness

A penal law must tell the citizen what is forbidden. The Court recalled K.A. Abbas v. Union of India, [1971] 2 SCR 446, which established that the doctrine of void for vagueness is part of Indian constitutional law, and Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab, (1994) 3 SCC 569, where the Court, dealing with the TADA, explained that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined, because vague laws offend several values: they trap the innocent by not giving fair warning, and they delegate basic policy matters to policemen and judges for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis.

The Court found support abroad. In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), the United States Supreme Court struck down provisions of the Communications Decency Act, 1996 that criminalised "indecent" and "patently offensive" communications to minors online, because the undefined terms would suppress a large amount of speech adults are entitled to send. Section 66A had the same flaw in a wider form.

Why the section could not be saved

Reading down was impossible. A court may narrow a provision to a constitutional core, but where every operative expression is vague there is no core to preserve, so section 66A was struck down in its entirety and not severed.

An assurance of reasonable administration was irrelevant. The Union assured the Court that the section would be used only against genuine excesses. The Court answered that governments may come and go, and a provision that is otherwise invalid cannot be saved by an assurance about how it will be administered; Collector of Customs, Madras v. Nathella Sampathu Chetty, [1962] 3 SCR 786, holds only that a valid law is not struck down merely because it could be abused.

What happened after 2015

The section outlived its invalidation. Bare Acts and police records continued to print it, and cases continued to be registered. On an application by the People's Union for Civil Liberties, the Supreme Court in 2021 described the continued prosecutions as shocking, and by its order of 12 October 2022 directed that all pending prosecutions and investigations under section 66A be closed, that no new case be registered, and that where section 66A was one of several charges only that charge be deleted. Parliament then omitted section 66A by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, Schedule serial 32, with effect from 30 November 2023. A struck-down provision is void from the judgment; the omission removed the text itself.

Conclusion. Section 66A was struck down in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India on 24 March 2015 because it restricted speech on grounds (offence, annoyance, inconvenience) that article 19(2) does not permit, had no proximate connection with public order or any other permitted head, used undefined expressions that gave no fair warning and invited arbitrary arrests, and was so broad that it chilled virtually all dissenting opinion, so it could be neither read down nor saved by assurances of fair use. The Court nonetheless held that online speech may be regulated separately, and upheld section 69A. After years of unlawful prosecutions the Supreme Court ordered on 12 October 2022 that all section 66A cases be closed, and Parliament omitted the section with effect from 30 November 2023, leaving online speech to specific, narrowly drawn offences in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Act.