Indecent depiction of women on digital platforms proposed to be made punishable in India

New Delhi: Indecent representation of women on digital messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Skype has been proposed to be made illegal, according to amendments mooted by the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The amendments to widen the scope of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1986 are based on the observations made by a parliamentary standing committee and recommendations from the National Commission for Women. The amendments have been proposed keeping in mind the recent technological advancement in the field of communications. “Since the enactment of the Act, technological revolution has resulted

in the development of new forms of communication, such as internet, multi-media messaging, over-the-top (OTT) services and applications like Skype, Viber,

WhatsApp, Chat On, Snapchat, etc. “Keeping in mind these technological advancements, it has been decided to widen the scope of the law so as to cover such forms of media on one hand and to strengthen the existing safeguards to prevent indecent representation of women through any media form on the other,” a ministry statement read.

“The reformulated draft bill proposes amendments in definition of the term advertisement to include digital form or electronic form or hoardings, or SMS, MMS etc,” it added. The ministry “proposed amendments in definition of distribution to include publication, license or uploading using computer resource, or communication device and amendment in Section 4 to include that no person shall publish or distribute or cause to be published or cause to be distributed by any means any material which contains indecent representation of women in any form”.

The draft bill also proposes a penalty similar to that provided under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and creation of a centralised authority under the aegis of the National Commission of Women.