‘Will make N Korea blush’: Cong’s acerbic attack on Centre over new IT rules

The Centre’s new information technology rules that forced Facebook Inc’s messaging platform WhatsApp to petition the Delhi high court are aimed at asphyxiating democracy and curbing dissent, the Congress said on Wednesday.

The new rules are “dire, drastic and draconian”, Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi said at an online media briefing on Wednesday as he sought to scale up the offensive against the rules that were notified three months earlier in February but came into effect at midnight.

“The issuance of the new intermediary guidelines reflect the BJP government’s syndrome, which is a ‘Big Daddy syndrome’. It is a control freak syndrome…. You would make the North Korean model of control of the media blush,” Singhvi said.