New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down hard on search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for not following its orders regarding filtering of advertisements that feature pre-natal sex determination in India.
The SC bench headed by Justices Dipak Misra and R. Banumathi said that the search engines had violated Indian laws that prohibit the sale of sex determination tests and their advertising.
The court has now asked the Centre to organise a meeting of technical experts and search engines within 10 days to come up with steps to avoid such forms of illegal advertising.
According to reports by ET, lawyers for the tech giants have said it was not technically possible to block all the key words, which are connected to such ads, as it would also block any content connected to such words.
"You have to do something about this (such ads on search engines). This has become a social evil," the court observed, adding, "You have to abide by the law. You can't say that you are not technically equipped. If you say you are, 'get out of the market."
Last year, the court had ordered the search engine giants to follow local laws in regard to all these banned practice. The practice of sex selection and their advertisements were prohibited under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, 1994.
The hearing is based on a petition filed by Sabu Mathew George, who is a member of the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee, set up by the SC in 2003 to inspect and report the implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994.
