Without ob­tain­ing any per­mis­sion from the req­ui­site au­thor­i­ties un­der the In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Act, 2000 and with­out cit­ing any no­ti­fi­ca­tion or or­der of the Min­istry of Elec­tron­ics and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy, the In­dian gov­ern­ment di­rectly or through the po­lice ma­chin­ery un­der the Pun­jab po­lice has arm-twisted many In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers in Pun­jab and parts of In­dia to se­lec­tively block the Sikh Siyasat web­site -www.sikhsiyasat.net -a Pun­jab-based pop­u­lar re­li­gio-po­lit­i­cal news por­tal. WSN Ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh ex­poses the game be­hind the move. 

SIKH SIYASAT HAS BEEN STEADILY EX­POS­ING the half-truths and lies of the In­dian state ma­chin­ery as well as that of the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment con­sis­tently and per­sis­tently.

This year, to mark the an­niver­sary of the Unimag­in­able Cat­a­stro­phe of June 1984, Sikh Siyasat has launched a se­ries of ar­ti­cles on the 43 Gur­d­waras which were si­mul­ta­ne­ously at­tacked when Akal Takht was bom­barded. Like­wise, in the re­cent past, they have also launched ‘talk­ing books’ ver­sion of Sikh ide­o­logue Ajmer Singh’s books on the events lead­ing to June 1984 and be­yond.

The po­lit­i­cal na­ture of the ‘ban’ is not lost on Sikhs and Sikh me­dia. At a time, when the Sikh world is rem­i­nisc­ing events of June 1984, whether Lud­hi­ana Mem­ber Par­lia­ment Ravneet Singh Bittu, who is the grand­son of gross hu­man rights vi­o­la­tor for­mer Pun­jab Chief Min­is­ter Beant Singh, likes it or not, what does the dirty tricks cell de­sire to achieve by block­ing in­for­ma­tion, pieces of writ­ing and videos, know­ing fully well that such a move will be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive? Or is there an ul­te­rior mo­tive?

To­day, the www.sikhsiyasat.net web­site is op­er­a­tional in parts of Pun­jab and In­dia but does not show up in many parts of the state and In­dia. This is def­i­nitely a new and per­ni­cious at­tempt, per­haps to by­pass the le­gal­ity of the ac­tion, to ha­rass me­dia cen­tres of na­tion­al­i­ties, es­pe­cially those who spare no ef­fort to tell the whole truth.

“We owe al­le­giance only to the Khalsa Panth and its in­ter­ests. We will not be cowed down by such tac­tics. We will fight this tooth and nail and we have the bless­ings of the Gu­rus and the Sikh San­gat with us.”

Par­m­jeet Singh, Ed­i­tor, Sikh Siyasat

This is not the first time. Way back in 2015, when the Bar­gari Mor­cha was at its peak, the Sikh Siyasat re­ceived writ­ten or­ders re­gard­ing “ob­jec­tion­able con­tent”, which they com­pre­hen­sively con­tested and hence there was no step by the con­cerned gov­ern­ment de­part­ment.

With fewer pos­si­bil­i­ties of protes­ta­tions on the roads, In­dia is in an over­drive to sub­vert hu­man rights of cit­i­zens, es­pe­cially those be­long­ing to mi­nori­ties. It is widely known that In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers in In­dia do not have the com­mer­cial clout nor the po­lit­i­cal will to stand up to il­le­gal gov­ern­ment or­ders and in this par­tic­u­lar case, it seems that the or­ders are only ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In this case, too, there is an ap­pre­hen­sion that the ear-pinch­ing has per­haps been done by ‘ex­perts’ close to the se­nior ech­e­lons in the Pun­jab po­lice ma­chin­ery.

Speak­ing to The World Sikh News, Sikh Siyasat ed­i­tor, Par­m­jeet Singh said, “The Eng­lish sec­tion of our News por­tal www.sikhsiyasat.net has been se­lec­tively blocked, whereas the Pun­jabi and video sec­tions are still on­line.”

“This “close to com­plete block­ing” of our site hap­pened in the evening of 6 June and is still con­tin­u­ing. We are still look­ing for the rea­sons be­hind such ac­tion, though cir­cum­stan­tially it is clear that cov­er­age of June 1984 across the Sikh world on all plat­forms of so­cial me­dia has bam­boo­zled many dur­ing the last one week.” he added.

This “close to com­plete block­ing” of our web­site hap­pened in the evening of 6 June and is still con­tin­u­ing. We are still look­ing for the rea­sons be­hind such ac­tion, though cir­cum­stan­tially it is clear that cov­er­age of June 1984 across the Sikh world on all plat­forms of so­cial me­dia has bam­boo­zled many dur­ing the last one week.”

Par­m­jeet Singh, Ed­i­tor, Sikh Siyasat

World Sikh News ques­tions the il­le­gal move of the uniden­ti­fied au­thor­i­ties. As­sum­ing that there was an ap­pre­hen­sion of vi­o­la­tion of any pro­vi­sions of any act, as a mat­ter of fair ad­ju­di­ca­tion, the ad­mins and con­tent cre­ators of the web­site must have been served with pre-re­moval hear­ing no­tices and only then a de­ci­sion should have been taken.

A re­ply re­ceived un­der the Right to In­for­ma­tion Act 2005 by Priyanka Chaud­huri on 31 De­cem­ber 2018 stated that for the pe­riod 2010 to 2018, as many as 14,221 web­sites have been blocked un­der Sec­tion 69 of the In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Act, 2000. How­ever, in the same re­ply, the Min­istry re­fused to give the names of the blocked web­sites tak­ing im­mu­nity un­der Sec­tion 8(1) of the RTI Act ex­empt­ing them from the dis­clo­sure of such in­for­ma­tion.

Nev­er­the­less, any des­ig­nated agency of the gov­ern­ment or the ME­ITY which will seek to de­fend the de­ci­sion of block­ing the web­site on the grounds as men­tioned in Sec­tion 69A of the IT Act, 2000 can eas­ily be hauled up for pro­ce­dural lapse and a to­tal de­nial of norms of nat­ural jus­tice.

Supreme Court lawyer Harpreet Singh Hora says, “Such sud­den bans are not only con­sti­tu­tion­ally tough to be de­fended as these are vi­ola­tive of Ar­ti­cle 14 and 19 of the In­dian con­sti­tu­tion, but also erode the con­fi­dence in work­ing of the ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ties thereby against the doc­trine of “just, fair and rea­son­able pro­ce­dure” es­tab­lished un­der Ar­ti­cle 21.”

Un­able to bear the plethora of ar­ti­cles and posts on Sikh re­mem­brance of the at­tack on Dar­bar Sahib, also known as the Golden Tem­ple, in June 1984 by the In­dian armed forces, the dirty tricks de­part­ments of the Con­gress gov­ern­ment of Pun­jab and the BJP-led coali­tion in Delhi seem to be in over­drive to do the im­pos­si­ble -erase Sikh mem­ory.

“Such sud­den bans are not only con­sti­tu­tion­ally tough to be de­fended as these are vi­ola­tive of Ar­ti­cle 14 and 19 of the In­dian con­sti­tu­tion but also erode the con­fi­dence in work­ing of the ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ties thereby against the doc­trine of “just, fair and rea­son­able pro­ce­dure” es­tab­lished un­der Ar­ti­cle 21.”

Harpreet Singh Hora, Supreme Court lawyer 

Spec­i­fy­ing the le­gal­ity of the step taken by the gov­ern­ment, Harpreet Singh Hora told WSN, “On the face of it, this seems to be an ex­em­plary case of the over­ar­ch­ing na­ture and word­ings of pro­vi­sions of the IT Act and the IT Rules be­ing mis­used by the au­thor­i­ties to bring the dis­sem­i­na­tion of speech through that web­site, to a halt.”

For the last two decades, the Sikh Siyasat team has been ded­i­cated to fur­ther­ing the in­ter­ests of the Khalsa Panth, stead­fastly chron­i­cling con­tem­po­rary Sikh and Pun­jab his­tory of our times through print and on­line pres­ence, tak­ing of so­cial, re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal, wa­ter re­sources and many path-break­ing is­sues, never bat­ting an eye­lid over the paucity of re­sources, nor flinch­ing at the pres­sure ex­erted by state agen­cies from time to time over the years.

Sikh Siyasat ed­i­tor Par­m­jeet Singh de­fi­antly said, “We owe al­le­giance to the Khalsa Panth and its in­ter­ests. We will not be cowed down by such tac­tics. We will fight this tooth and nail and we have the bless­ings of the Gu­rus and the Sikh San­gat with us.”