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The Congress today termed as "surreptitious assault on free speech" the new amendment in the draft IT Rules, asking social media companies to take down news articles that have been deemed "fake" by the Press Information Bureau
The Editors Guild of India stated that the draft amendment to IT Rules will serve to make it easier to muzzle the free press, and will give "sweeping" powers to the PIB.
It has been proposed as an amendment to the Information Technology Rules which regulate social media, news websites, e-commerce sites and streaming services.
If approved, this could make the government the ultimate arbiter of news.
The language of the proposal also suggests that in the future, it may not be just the PIB's fact-checking unit but also other authorised entities that could mark news items as fake.