New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the ministry of health and family welfare to set up a “nodal agency” to enforce the ban on commercial advertisements and all forms of information on internet relating to “pre-natal sex determination” tests to find out whether a foetus is a boy or girl.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Amitav Roy gave this direction on a PIL filed in 2008 by one Sabu Mathew George, complaining that a number of foreign websites are soliciting couples to undergo sex determination tests, which are banned under the Indian laws.

The bench pointed out that the sex determination is not required in our country, where, in several places, boys are unable to get married due to decline in sex ratio and are unable to find girls.

The bench did not accept the arguments of tech giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft that such ban would violate the right to free of information, and said this aspect will be considered later. The court said the nodal agency can be alerted by any person on such information available on the internet.

Upon receiving information, the agency will give 36 hours to the search engine concerned for blocking information. Justice Misra, said the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Technique (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, are strictly prohibited such tests in India.