{"id":191615,"date":"2022-06-21T21:01:22","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T15:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=191615"},"modified":"2022-06-21T21:01:22","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T15:31:22","slug":"resurrecting-a-dead-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/resurrecting-a-dead-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Resurrecting a dead law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

News:<\/strong> Recently, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000<\/strong> is back in the news. India made a formal submission for criminalising \u201coffensive messages\u201d<\/strong> in the ongoing negotiations at the United Nations f<\/strong>or a proposed international treaty on combating cybercrime. The language in the submission is similar to what was used in Section 66A.<\/p>\n

About the law<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Supreme Court had declared Section 66A of the IT Act, unconstitutional in 2015 in\u00a0Shreya Singhal v. Union of India<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0on the ground of having a \u201cchilling effect on free speech\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If India\u2019s proposal is accepted, would the provision have a direct effect on the Indian legal system? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Theory of monism<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In this, international law is automatically incorporated into the domestic legal system of the country. The Parliament is not required to enact an enabling legislation fo giving effect.<\/p>\n

Theory of dualist state.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The international law does not become a part of the domestic legal system because the Parliament is required to amend the domestic law to implement the international law.<\/p>\n

Case of India<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Although, India is a dualist state<\/strong>. But, over the years, the Supreme Court of India has moved away from this traditional dualist approach<\/strong> towards monism<\/strong>. For Example,<\/p>\n

The SC of India in\u00a0Vishakha v. State of Rajasthan<\/em>\u00a0(1997<\/strong>),\u00a0National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India<\/em>\u00a0(2014),<\/strong> and\u00a0K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India<\/em>\u00a0(2018),<\/strong> followed the international law<\/strong> and judicially incorporated<\/strong> the readings into India\u2019s domestic law.<\/p>\n

What will be the Judicial scenarios in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1) Scenario I<\/strong>: If international treaty combating cybercrime is finalized with a provision similar to Section 66A and the Indian Parliament has not enacted law to give effect.<\/p>\n

The Indian courts will give primacy to the domestic law enunciated in Shreya Singhal<\/em>\u00a0Case<\/em>, not the international treaty because the international law would be in conflict with domestic law.<\/p>\n

Scenario II: I<\/strong>f Parliament enacts legislation or amends existing legislation to implement the international treaty under the Article 253 of the Constitution of India<\/strong> and incorporate a provision similar to Section 66A back on the statute book.<\/p>\n

If the constitutionality of the re-introduced<\/strong> version of Section 66A is challenged. The constitutional court will still strike down it down because it will still be violative of the fundamental right to free speech, the ground which was used in the\u00a0Shreya Singhal<\/em> Case<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What is the major issue?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The Indian government proposed the inclusion of a provision in an international treaty which was struck down by its own apex court for breaching fundamental rights.<\/p>\n

Way Forward<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.K. and many countries in the European Union have reportedly already contested India\u2019s submission because such proposals seek to violate the freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article \u201cResurrecting a dead law\u201d published in the \u201cThe Hindu\u201d on 21st<\/sup> June 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News: Recently, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is back in the news. India made a formal submission for criminalising \u201coffensive messages\u201d in the ongoing negotiations at the United Nations for a proposed international treaty on combating cybercrime. The language in the submission is similar to what was used in Section 66A. About… Continue reading Resurrecting a dead law<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,10498],"class_list":["post-191615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704957307},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}