New Delhi: After public outrage and accusations that it has defied an earlier order of the Supreme Court which refused recently to ban online porn, the government is reworking a decree that saw 857 sites being blocked for allegedly hosting porn. Among those that were impacted were dating, humour, and newspaper sites.
Telecoms have been asked today to immediately unblock sites which do not have pornographic content, said Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. "I reject with contempt the charge that it is a Talibani government, as being said by some of the critics. Our government supports free media," the minister said.
The government's order, issued late last week, asked internet service providers or telecoms to cut off access to a long list of sites, in what critics described as an egregious case of moral policing. Sources today admitted that instead of doing its homework, the government blocked the 800 sites listed by a lawyer who has asked the Supreme Court to ban online porn.
Last month, the Supreme Court refused to ban online porn, with Chief Justice HL Dattu commenting that it would amount to a violation of the right to personal liberty.
"Somebody may come to the court and say look, I am above 18, and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room?" he had said.
The government claimed that its order was based on recent Supreme Court ire about insufficient efforts to block child pornography.
The court is hearing a Public Interest Litigation or PIL that alleges porn results in increased violence against women. The petitioner, Kamlesh Vaswani from Madhya Pradesh, was
quoted in the New York Times as attributing last week's order to "Prime Minister Modi's good governance and the good faith with which this government has been working... they have been instrumental in blocking the 857 websites that I have been looking to get blocked."
French media has reported that the list of 800-odd sites that have been blocked includes newspapers like Le Dauphine.