Centre Withdraws Proposal to Create Social Media Hub

Attorney General KK Venugopal told the apex court that the policy would be reviewed by the government.

The central government on Friday, 3 August, told the Supreme Court that it is withdrawing the notification proposing to create a social media hub. Attorney General KK Venugopal told the apex court that the social media policy would be reviewed by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry under Rajyavardhan Rathore.

This comes just weeks after the Supreme Court compared the government’s move to create the ‘Social Media Communication Hub’ to “creating a surveillance state”.

THE BASIC ARGUMENT

The bench was hearing a petition filed by TMC MLA Mahua Moitra alleging that the Centre's social media hub policy was to be used as a tool to monitor social media activities of the citizens and should be quashed.

In her plea, she said such intrusive action on part of the government was "not only without the authority of law, but brazenly infringes" her fundamental right to freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and violated her right of privacy.

FLASHBACK

In May 2017, the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a public sector undertaking under the ministry, had floated a tender to supply software for the project.

The tender for the proposal would have been opened on 20 August for a software which would do 360-degree monitoring on all social media platforms such WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram and track e-mail contents, she said.

On 13 July, the apex court had asked the government whether its move to create such a hub was to tap people's WhatsApp messages, and observed that it would be like creating a "surveillance state".

(With inputs from PTI.)