Can’t curtail right to information: Supreme Court

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday made it clear that it can’t curtail the right to seek information, knowledge and wisdom as long as the search of information on the internet does not violate sex determination law.

Giving this ruling a three-judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.M. kanwilkar and M.M. Shantanagouder said, “there is no need for anyone to infer that there is any right to curtail information, knowledge and wisdom, without violating the law which bars sex determination tests.”

The bench passed this order on a batch of petitions filed by NGO Sabu Geoerge and others after hearing senior counslers Harish Salve, Abhishek Singhvi and K.V. Viswanathan, appearing for the search engines, counsle Sanjay parikh for petitioner and solicitor General Ranjit Kumar for the Centre.

Search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo said that they would not  sponsor any advertisement on pre-natal sex determination tests. They said, “if we discover something objectionable we will refer it to the nodal officer appointed by the Union government and remove the contents if the nodal officer ask us to do so.”

The bench said that volumes of literature come within the internet and such information can’t be curtailed as long as the content does not defeat the obejects of the law.   

The court took note of the submission of the Centre that nodal officers have been appointed in all the states to receive complaints and to act on it.