Search engines rapped for gender test ads

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, July 06, 2016 DHNS: The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft for “flagrantly violating” rules and failing to block advertisements on prenatal sex determination.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and R Banumathi told Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the Union government, to hold a meeting of technical experts and representatives of the search engines within 10 days to explore ways to deal with the problem.

“They are flagrantly violating the Indian law and are saying that they cannot do anything. It is not acceptable and this needs to be controlled. They can’t put anything which is against the law of the country,” the bench said.

“There can be no dispute that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! can’t put anything in the name of corridor and violate the law of the country,” the bench observed.

The court also asked PIL petitioner Dr Sabu Mathew George to participate in the meeting. George sought the court’s intervention in view of the decreasing number of girl child in the country.

His counsel Sanjay Parikh submitted that despite the previous order by the court, the Websites continued to violate the provisions of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994.

The search engines, for their part, claimed that it was not possible for them to block such material from their side.

The court put the matter for further consideration on July 25.