New Delhi: The Supreme Court today asked the Secretary of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to file affidavit on whether the Centre is competent to issue direction to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block porn sites particularly those showing child pornography.
“The Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), may file his personal affidavit within one week on the issue whether the DoT or any other department of the Government of India is competent to issue direction to the respondent No.4 (ISPs) to call off sites showing pornography,” a bench headed by Justice B S Chauhan said.
The bench passed the order after service providers submitted that they on on their own cannot block such sites and they can do so only on the direction of the government. The court was hearing a petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani who pleaded that although watching obscene videos is not an offence, pornographic sites should be banned as they are one of the major causes for crime against women.
