Digital India Bill proposed by Rajeev Chandrasekhar will ban 11 types of content

The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently announced plans to censor certain types of content from the internet. The Chandrasekhar claims that the new bill will be intended to combat cybercrime worldwide.

Chandrasekhar told NDTV that consultations on the Digital India Bill will begin this month and the new Digital Personal Data Protection Bill will be presented in parliament soon.

What type of content will the bill outlaw?

The bill is expected to tackle a wide range of safety concerns on the internet, combating child sexual abuse material, religious incitement material, misinformation on social media, and platforms patent violation material.

Chandrasekhar said, "There are 11 things that we don't want on social media - child sexual abuse material, religious incitement material, patent violation material, misinformation, and things like that."

The full list of issues mentioned in the bill include pornography, content harmful for children, copyright infringement, misleading content, impersonation, content deemed against India's unity and integrity, computer malware, banned online games, and anything illegal.

Problems of the Past

Chandrasekhar blamed the previous UPA government for the challenges faced by current BJP government. He claimed that the issues stemmed from the amendments to the IT Act in 2008 that granted immunity to big tech and social media companies. "We inherited a toxic internet system in 2014," he said.

While all the above-mentioned issues are already present in the last update of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code), the new bill will give the government the ability to hold platforms accountable for hosting such content.

According to Chandrasekhar, the Digital India Bill is a part of the government's efforts to make the internet open and safe and to protect the digital citizen. The minister also stressed the role platforms will play in executing this new initiative; "It is the responsibility of the online platform to keep its platform safe and trusted for the digital citizens."