Section 66A: Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc

Leading cases

• Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015)The Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Section 118(d) of the Kerala Police Act as violating Article 19(1)(a), upheld Section 69A and the blocking rules, and read down Section 79(3)(b).

Questions on this section

2 questions in 6 of our papers cite Section 66A. Try these from the free papers:

1. 1. In Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015), the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which punished the sending of offensive messages through a communication service. The main reason was that the provision:

   A.was beyond the legislative competence of Parliament under the Seventh ScheduleB.violated Article 14 alone, because it applied to online speech and not to printC.was an unreasonable restriction on Article 19(1)(a) and not saved by Article 19(2)D.violated Article 20(1) because it operated retrospectively on past messages
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