By Bharath Joshi
Bengaluru: The Congress government is preparing to enact separate laws to combat fake news and hate speech while also introducing specific penal provisions to deter people from disrupting order.
The government has come up with a basic draft of the Karnataka Misinformation and Fake News (Prohibition) Bill and the Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes (Prevention And Control) Bill, according to a source with direct knowledge of this, as it looks to institutionalise mechanisms to fight the twin hazards.
The law department has sent the drafts to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s office, DH has learnt.
The Siddaramaiah administration has already set up the Information Disorder Tackling Unit (IDTU), a fact-checking exercise that ran for a 90-day trial through its website satya.karnataka.gov.in during the Lok Sabha polls last year. The IDTU combed 64,000 articles per day on the internet, resulting in at least 18 FIRs.
Since coming to power in 2023, the Congress government has booked 259 ‘fake news’ cases. Of them, 75 cases are under investigation; six cases have seen punishment.
In October last year, the government formed a high-level committee chaired by Home Minister G Parameshwara to institutionalise the fact-check mechanism. IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge is co-chairing the committee.
Priyank insisted that curbing fake news and misinformation was imperative. He even pointed to warnings by former Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, former Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the perils of misinformation.
This story was originally published in deccanherald.com. Read the full story here.