India ranks 161 out of 180 in this year's Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), lagging behind Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indian journalists and human rights activists have regularly voiced concern and protested against arbitrary arrests and cases filed against them, as well as the banning and removal of content that is critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.

In January, the government invoked emergency laws to block links to a BBC documentary critical of Modi's leadership during the 2002 riots in Gujarat when he was chief minister of the state. It described the documentary as "propaganda" and "anti-India garbage."

Free speech advocates and rights activists said this was a clear case of the government "crushing dissent."

Soon afterwards, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology published draft amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules of 2021.

These suggested that the government would create a fact-checking body that would be able to tag information "in respect of any business of the Central government" as "fake, false or misleading."

The rules would also apply to "intermediaries," meaning social media platforms, which would be obligated to pull down flagged content and ensure that it was not shared.

Ever since, free speech advocates and journalists have criticized the "draconian" laws and questioned their constitutional validity.

Social media platforms exempt till now

Currently, social media platforms are considered as "safe harbors" that are protected from being directly liable for content posted on their platform. The amended IT rules would change that.

Last year, IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told the daily Indian Express that under the new rules it would be possible to hold social media platforms responsible for content and that they would have to ensure that "no unlawful content or misinformation" was posted.

Comedian Kunal Kamra takes matter to court

On April 6, the government ushered in the new rules as expected. A week later, the Indian Express reported that an official had confirmed that the government was "close to finalizing the contours of the Fact Check Unit (FCU)" and details would be released "in about 10 days."

Kunal Kamra, a stand-up comedian and political satirist with over 2 million followers on YouTube and on Twitter, decided to take matters into his own hands. He filed a petition in the Bombay High Court on April 10, challenging the amendments.

He argued that the central government could not "act as judge and prosecutor in its own cause." He also said that the new rules would "defeat the purpose of political satire" and would be harmful to his profession as he relied "on social media platforms to share content."

His petition maintains that the new rules are not just unconstitutional but also infringe upon the right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to practice one's trade and profession.

At a hearing in Mumbai on April 27, the government said that it would not form the proposed FCU until the next hearing on July 5.

What is truth? 

Tanmay Singh, a senior litigation counsel at the New Dehli-based Internet Freedom Foundation, told DW that at a philosophical level the "government has assumed total power to decide what the truth is and what truth will be available to Indian citizens."

He added that the new rules did not protect citizens from fake news but seemed intended to "correct the picture of the government available online."

Moreover, he said, there was no explanation of what the government meant by

"fake" or "false" news. "By law, Indians have a right to know if what they're doing or posting is legally permissible or not. Vagueness in law is not constitutionally permissible," he said.

In an editorial for the Indian Express, the IT minister explained on April 15 that the rules were "a step towards denying space for any misinformation on the internet."

India on 'a dark path'

Akash Banerjee, a political satirist with over 3 million followers on YouTube and over 600,000 followers on Twitter, said that even the proposal of new rules indicated that India was "headed towards a dark path."

"I do not know any country in the democratic world where a YouTuber dealing with comedy and satire has to be answerable to a government fact-checking body. These are very clear early warning signs of an authoritarian regime," he told DW.

Ayush Tiwari from The Morning Context, a digital news website, told DW that apart from the government having the power to "take away my readers," most online news platforms operated on fewer resources than big newspapers or TV channels. "If the government takes down my story, I can go to court. But can I really afford to go to court each time the government says I've written something false? How long will a small organization be able to continue operations?"

He said that the ambiguity of the law would force smaller organizations to engage in self-censorship.

"The moment one chooses not to say something out of fear, one has immediately lost one's freedom of expression," agreed Tanmay Singh.

"Anybody in India who claims that they're not doing self-censorship is lying through their teeth," said Akash Banerjee

Edited by: Anne Thomas