Union Government issued New IT Guidelines to stop its Misuse

The Union government of India on 29 November 2012 issued new guidelines to stop misuse of a particular section of the Information Technology Act. Under the revised guidelines, the cases dealing with spreading messages of reported hatred by electronic medium will be decided by a senior police officer not below the rank of DCP in rural and urban areas. An IGP rank officer will have to give prior approval for registration of cases relating to section 66(a) of IT Act in metro-politan cities. Communication and IT Ministry sent an advisory to this effect to all the states.

The section 66[a] of IT Act provides for a jail term of upto three years making it an offence to send by means of computer resource or communication device any information which is grossly offensive, menacing and causes annoyance or hatred.