Section 66A and Other Legal Zombies
Uploaded: over 3 years ago; Last updated: over 2 years ago ; Date of Publication: November-2018
All India
2015 - 2018
English
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
We find that an unconstitutional provision, Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act 2000, continues to be used by police departments across India in prosecutions. This undermines the freedom of speech, rule of law, and institutional integrity of the Supreme Court. We reason that this is indicative of signal failures between and beyond the institutions of government and recommend solutions which carry beyond Section 66-A.
Research Report
We first reference the Shreya Singhal ruling and explain these instances of judicial review from an institutional perspective, premised on notions of dialogue between different branches of State. Proceeding with the argument specific to Section 66-A, we analyse three distinct data sets (online legal databases, the National Crime Records Bureau, and Press Reports) to weave the central thread of our paper of its continued application. We argue that the continued use is a product of communication failures between the branches of State and offer some solutions in conclusion.
Section 66A Cases 2016-2018
This data contains two data ranges from online case law databases for the incidence of Section 66A in legal cases. 1) Table 1 is from IndianKanoon.org for the year 2018 (till end of October) 2) Table 2 is from SccOnline from March 2015 till October, 2018
