Porn ban: Only against child pornography, Govt tells SC

The Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court that it was only against child pornographic content being displayed on internet and will not be a “moral police” entering into personal bedrooms and stopping adults from watching pornographic websites.

The statement came in the wake of the Centre banning 857 websites with pornographic content. Appearing for Centre in the PIl filed by advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi said that since the ban, a fresh notification was issued on August 4 allowing internet service providers to review and disable only those websites among the 857 related to child pornography. 

Vaswani, who had supplied the list of 857 websites to the Centre at the Court’s instance was not satisfied by the Centre’s half-hearted approach. It was his plea that pornographic content should be erased from internet as it was serving as a cause for juveniles and adults to commit sexual crimes. His lawyer Vijay Panjwani informed the Court that the Centre must act tough against Internet Service providers (ISP) for transmitting pornography.

Rohatgi said, “Child pornography has to be banned. Whoever gives us information we will take action to stop.” But on the question of a complete ban, he did not support the petitioner. “We cannot become a totalitarian state. According to the petitioner, two adults sitting in a room should not watch pornography. We cannot be present in everybody’s bedroom.”

Moreover, there was another worry confronting the Centre. “We are moving towards Digital India. This has an inclusive purpose to provide maximum services on internet. We will be stopping them with such a ban. After all there is a right of free speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a),” A-G said. 

Making a distinction between watching pornography and selling or distributing porn content, Rohatgi said, “We are not taking a call today to be moral police and we are not going to be moral police. It is a difficult task.”