Clampdown on porn sites in India, on govt orders

02nd August 2015
Clampdown on porn sites in India,  on govt orders

Bangalore,  August 2 2015:  Twitter and  Reddit in India  were  ablaze this Sunday morning with reports that  almost of the world's top dozen pornography  sites were inaccessible in the country. 
Customers  cited  state-owned   Internet providers MTNL and BSNL   as well as private operators like Spectranet, Tikona, Asianet, Hathway  and mobile provider Vodafone  as those who seemed to have blocked the sites.  Porn pursuers  mostly faced blank pages -- but some  reported receiving  messages like :"This site has been blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authority."   
The hashtag #PornBan became a top Twitter trend   by noon.
There has been no announcement  from government or indication  that they are coming down on porn sites.  But  Deccan Chronicle  quotes BJ Srinath, head of Cyber Law at the Department of Infomation Technology saying the clampdown was due to an official order and grew from  concern on the impact of  that such openly available material   on children, women etc. Last month the Supreme Court  took up a public interest litigation  by an Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani which sought  the blocking of all porn sites  and prayed for an interim order till the government  came up with a policy.
The Court declined to pronounce any such order and the remarks of  Chief Justice HL Dattu, gave an inkling of  thinking on the Bench: "Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody can come to the court and say ‘Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room? It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty) of the Constitution.’ Yes the issue is serious and some steps need to be taken... let us see what stand the Centre will take."
Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, stated on behalf of Government: "The ministry will soon file a response to the petition and detail the action taken. All necessary steps under the Information and Technology Act will be taken."
Maybe Sunday's clamp down is part of Government's response.(updated 6 am, Aug 3 2015)