The Indian government is looking at amending IPC sections 153A and 505 to include provisions specified under Section 66A, that were struck down by the Supreme Court in March 2015, reports DNA. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued recommendations to the Centre last week specifying that instead of modifying the current IT Act, the govt can look at “strengthening” IPC sections 153A and 505, the report said. Section 66A of the IT Act was initially formulated in the year 2000 to criminalize offensive and hate speech content on the Internet.


These recommendations were issued by the MHA after an ‘expert’ committee, headed by TK Vishwanathan, Secretary General of Lok Sabha, met last week. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY), also supported these suggestion made by MHA. While the Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry suggested a real-time system for handling cyber-crime cases along with a legal backing under the IT Act.