New social media rules dire, drastic, draconian: Congress

Even as WhatsApp moved court against the new intermediary rules and guidelines for social media that came into effect from Wednesday, the Congress lashed out at these new regulations, calling it “yet another attempt by the Modi government to capture and subordinate every pillar and agency of freedom of thought and expression”.

Terming the new rules as “a severe blow to the vibrant culture of discourse, deliberation and dissent in India”, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said “the new intermediary rules issued by the Modi government are dire, drastic and draconian in nature and these guidelines reflect that the BJP government is suffering from the ‘Big Daddy’ syndrome”.

Lamenting that the government didn’t bother to recall or amend the intermediary rules despite condemnation from civil and political society, he said “dictatorial regimes, including the North Korean one, would blush at the brazenness with which the Modi government has done so”. While elaborating the Congress’ stated objections to various clauses of the law, Singhvi said, “in the obsessive mindset of this government to act as control freaks for all and sundry, bent upon strangulating free speech, thought and expression, it has also thrown out of the window all principles of privacy elaborated in the famous Puttaswamy judgement of the Supreme Court by the nine-judge bench”.


The eminent lawyer didn’t commit when asked about the possibility of his party challenging the law in court. He pointed out that some other affected stakeholders have already done that. Singhvi said for the Congress, taking the debate about the consequences of these guidelines to larger society “is far more important than the narrow legality” of it.