PENAL REGULATIONS FOR ONLINE SPEECH

TENSIONS BETWEEN EXPRESSION AND NATIONAL SECURITY

Abstract

For a country like India, the right to access information and expression is seen as the backbone of democracy and as a propagator of its national interest, as this helps citizens, promote accountability and encourage diverse views of its people. That’s the reason is constitution provides freedom of speech and expression in part 3 of the constitution under art. 19(1) but rights are not absolute rather subject to reasonable restrictions which are explicitly given under article 19(2). Today we live in connected world facilitated by information and communication technology. With growing technology and the virtual world, the traditional boundaries of free expression have been narrowed down. However, now online platform being used to spread harm, misinformation and upsurge of terrorism and hate speech as post of media can reach millions of people on just on click. In this article we will see how different penal regulations are used by the government against such speech and expression and how such regulations are being used as a weapon by the government to curb free speech in India and growing trend of over criminalising online speech.