Govt says fact-check body to curb misinformation, critics allege censorship

It all started in January this year, when, out of the blue, a completely new and unrelated clause was added as a postscript to the draft online gaming rules. The clause proposed that the Centre’s Press Information Bureau can flag and instruct online intermediaries if a piece of information online relating to the government was deemed as fake. Intermediaries would then have to act and take it down.

On Thursday, that proposal was notified by the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Though the reference to the PIB was removed in the final rules, with the government saying it will notify a fact-check unit, the spirit of the legislation remained the same.