Our Correspondent / New Delhi
The government of India today informed the Supreme Court that three major search engines — Microsoft, Google and Yahoo — have agreed to auto block ads commercially promoting sex determination tests as prohibited under the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (PC&PNDT Act).
The government told the bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice C. Nagappan on Monday that in compliance with the provisions of the PC&PNDT Act, the advertisements commercially promoting sex determination tests would be put under auto block and accessing them would not be possible.
The Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar submitted to the court the “proposed list of words” in respect of which when commands would be given, there will be “auto block” with a warning and nothing would be reflected in the internet, as it is prohibited in India.
The court was told that three search engines – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo India – have by their July 19, August 1 and July 29 communication respectively have conveyed to the government of their compliance with the provisions of PC&PNDT Act.
The proposed list of the keywords, which could no more be used for accessing information on sex determination tests includes “Gender selection, Gender selection Kits, Gender selection service, Gender selection clinics, Gender selection technique, Prenatal sex selection, Prenatal sex selection kits, Prenatal sex selection service, Prenatal sex selection clinics, Prenatal sex selection technique … “
The bench said that the search engines would have an in-house mechanism to block access to advertisements on sex determination tests through keywords that may get generated, and the same would be conveyed to it.
“In our considered opinion, they are under obligation to see that the “doctrine of auto block” is applied within a reasonable period of time. It is difficult to accept the submission that once it is brought to their notice, they will do the needful. It need not be over emphasized that it has to be an in-house procedure/method to be introduced by the Companies, and we do direct”, the bench said in its order.
The bench said this as senior counsel C.A.Sundram appearing for Google India told the court that “…if anyone, taking recourse to any kind of ingenuity, feed certain words and something that is prohibited under the (PC&PNDT) Act comes into existence, the “principle of auto block” shall be immediately applied and it shall not be shown.”
However, besides Sundram, senior counsel K.V. Vishwanathan appearing for Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd. and senior counsel Anupam Lal Das appearing for Yahoo India told the court that they can auto block the information based on newly coined search key words only when it is brought to their notice.
Appearing for the petitioner Sabu Mathew George, senior counsel Sanjay Parikh told the court that what three search engines have agreed to is blocking of the advertisements commercially promoting sex determination techniques/kits but not the videos, searches, images promoting sex selection.