Parliamentary panel to review mechanism to curb fake news on May 7; media stakeholders to participate

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology will meet with officials from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, along with stakeholders from the media industry, to review mechanisms for curbing fake news. The meeting is scheduled for May 7 at 11 am.

The committee will examine the topic “Review of Mechanism to Curb Fake News” and will hear about the evidence from representatives of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and other media industry stakeholders.

It’s worth noting that the Fact Check Unit (FCU) under the Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), identified over 97 instances of fake news as of March 19, 2025 alone. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology, informed the Lok Sabha during a session on March 26 that the Ministry identified 583 fake news items in 2024, 557 in 2023, and 338 in 2022. Since 2022, the Ministry has flagged a total of 1,575 fake news cases.

So far in 2025, the PIB Fact Check Unit has received around 5,200 queries, of which 1,811 were deemed actionable.

In November of last year, the parliamentary committee, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, called media organizations including the News Broadcasters and Digital Association and the Editors Guild of India to testify on the issue of curbing fake news. The committee had previously decided to review the mechanisms to address fake news as well as emerging challenges related to OTT platforms.

Last year, the Bombay High Court struck down a section of the amended Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021, that authorized the government to establish its own Fact Check Unit (FCU). This FCU had the authority to label information as “fake,” “false,” or “misleading,” which threatened the safe harbor protections for social media intermediaries if they failed to remove such content.

In September 2024, the Bombay High Court ruled that the provision was “vague” and unconstitutional. Notably, the Editors Guild of India (EGI) welcomed the judgment, noting that the court found the amendment violated fundamental rights, including equality, free speech, and personal liberty, and failed the proportionality test. Moving forward, media groups are expected to collaborate with the government to tackle challenges related to fake news, such as deepfakes and doctored content.

In December last year, Vaishnaw remarked, “It is a major challenge that societies across the world are facing—the accountability of social media, particularly in the context of fake news and the creation of fake narratives.” He emphasized that establishing societal and legal accountability requires a significant consensus. “These are the issues where freedom of speech comes on one hand and accountability and having a proper real news network getting created, on the other hand. These are things which need to be debated and if the house agrees and if there is a consensus in the entire society we can come up with the new law.” he added.

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