The Editors Guild of India (EGI), India’s premier physique for safeguarding press freedom, has urged the federal government to reject a proposal to fight faux information on social media, saying it might be akin to censorship.

“Determination of fake news cannot be in the sole hands of the government and will result in the censorship of the press”, the editor’s group stated in a statement on Wednesday.

The proposed modification by the Ministry of Electronics and IT to Information Technology Rules, 2021, would bar social media platforms from internet hosting any data that the authorities establish as false within the newest measures by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities.

The draft modification issued on Tuesday stated that data deemed “fake or false” by the Press Information Bureau or by some other company authorised for fact-checking by the federal government could be prohibited.

If data is deemed as such, social media platforms or different “online intermediaries” must “make reasonable efforts” to make sure customers don’t “host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share” such data, it added.

The authorities will maintain a session with stakeholders to debate the modification on January 24, and has additionally invited “comments from stakeholders and general public” till January 25.

‘Surreptitious assault on free speech’

The EGI, which represents newspapers within the nation, in a press release on Wednesday, urged the federal government to scrap the proposal and start “meaningful consultations” with stakeholders on the regulatory framework for digital media.

“This will stifle legitimate criticism of the government and will have an adverse impact on the ability of the press to hold governments to account, which is a vital role it plays in a democracy,” it added.

The opposition Congress celebration condemned the proposed modification and known as it a “surreptitious assault on free speech and vile censorship”.

“The Indian National Congress strongly condemns this surreptitious assault on free speech and vile censorship. We demand that the new amendment in the Draft IT Rules be immediately withdrawn and that these rules be discussed threadbare in the forthcoming session of Parliament,” Congress media division head Pawan Khera stated at an AICC information convention, quoted by the Indian Express.

Targeting journalists

Over the years, there have been rising considerations concerning media freedom in India, particularly with escalating focusing on of journalists and on-line critics.

Rights teams and activists have raised considerations over dwindling press freedom and rising intimidation of journalists by the federal government.

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked India a hundred and fiftieth amongst 180 nations in its annual World Press Freedom Index 2022 – India’s lowest rank ever.

Journalist Siddique Kappan was released in September after spending more than 700 days in jail for attempting to go to the household of a Dalit teenager gang-raped in a small city within the northern state of Uttar Pradesh on a reporting journey.

Kappan, 42, was arrested on October 5, 2020, and charged beneath a stringent “terror” regulation whereas he was on his option to Hathras, the place authorities had allegedly burned the younger girl’s physique after she died of accidents suffered in the course of the assault.

In February 2022, the United Nations human rights consultants stated that investigative journalist Rana Ayyub has been subjected to “judicial harassment” and urged Indian authorities to “promptly” examine “relentless misogynistic and sectarian” assaults on social media in opposition to her.

A month later, she was barred from boarding a flight from Mumbai airport to London and she or he was investigated for alleged cash laundering, accusations that she has denied.  She has been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist authorities.

Police in Indian-administered Kashmir arrested prominent journalist Fahad Shah in February beneath stringent “anti-terror” legal guidelines and sedition, accusing him of “glorifying terrorism” and “spreading fake news”, in an intensifying crackdown on press freedom within the Himalayan area.