The Bombay High Court on Monday said that the new amendment to the Information Technology Rules prima facie does not seem to offer protection to parody or satire, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale was hearing a petition by stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra challenging the constitutional validity of the amendment.

The amendment, notified on April 6, regulates online gaming and news related to the Union government. The rules say that the Union Ministry of Information Technology will notify a fact-checking body with the power to tag any information “in respect of any business of the Central government” as “fake or false or misleading”.

Justice Patel took note of an affidavit by the Union government that said it will not seek to curb parody or satire. “That is not what your rules say,” he said, according to Bar and Bench. “There is no protection granted. That we will have to see.”

The court also observed: “The problem here is the rule however well-intentioned, doesn’t have the necessary guard rails.”

The bench also said that as Kamra’s petition pertained to freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, it would not go into whether he has the right to approach the court. “In any Article 19 case, locus is immaterial; we are not going to shoot the messenger,” the court said.

The bench will hear the case on April 27 at 10 am.

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How the Centre’s amendments to IT Rules will throttle press freedom

In January, when the draft rules were made public, the government had specified that the fact-check unit of the Press Information Bureau, under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, or any other agency authorised by the Centre will have the power to tag news as “fake”.

However, the final amendments notified on April 6 do not refer to the Press Information Bureau’s fact-checking wing, which has faced criticism for putting its “fake news” stamp on statements that the authorities themselves subsequently affirmed as being accurate.