After Rajasthan Govt’s Internet Shutdown To Prevent Cheating In Public Exam, Plea In Supreme Court Seeks Enforcement Of Shutdown Guidelines

“The internet shutdown order was passed to minimise the chances of cheating or copying in the examination. This shows the incompetence of the state government and Rajasthan Public Service Commission. The apprehension of cheating and malpractice is vague and arbitrary. There remains no evidence or assurance that the imposition of the internet shutdown would achieve the purpose that it seeks to achieve which is the prevention of cheating and malpractice in the scheduled examination. On the contrary, such imposition has affected the citizens at large and has impacted the access to justice, right to carry the profession, and right to freedom of speech and expression through the internet.”

Amid fears of a paper leak, the state government decided to temporarily suspend internet services in Rajasthan between February 25 and 27. This would ‘strengthen the arrangements for the event’ and to ensure ‘complete vigilance’, Bharatpur’s divisional commissioner disclosed in an order, one day before the Primary (Level I) and Upper Primary (Level II) School Teacher Direct Recruitment Examination 2022 was scheduled to be held. The affected districts were Alwar, Ajmer, Bhilwara, Bikaner, Bharatpur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Kota, Sriganganagar, Tonk, and Udaipur.

This is not the first time that the Rajasthan government stopped internet services with the excuse of preventing or minimising malpractices during competitive exams. There was a state-wide internet shutdown last year as well, during REET 2021. The petitioner has claimed that this practice flies in the face of the decision in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, in which the apex court not only laid down procedural rules for internet shutdowns, but also supplemented them with the requirement of timely reviews and non-permanence of shutdown orders. Not only does an internet crackdown like the one in Rajasthan violate free speech and the freedom of business, trade, and profession enshrined in clauses (a) and (g) of Article 19(1), but it also violates the right of litigants to access justice in a post-COVID world where video conferencing facilities have become an indispensable part of the judicial architecture, the petitioners have submitted.

Therefore, the petitioners have prayed for the following:

1. Immediate enforcement of the guidelines and directions laid down in Anuradha Bhasin.
2. Direction to all states and union territories to impose the directions and guidelines as per the dictum for the ‘practical implementation’ of internet shutdown in avoidable circumstances driven by necessity.
3. Initiation of civil contempt proceedings against state of Rajasthan for non-compliance with the Anuradha Bhasin dictum.
4. Declaration that internet services as among the ‘essential services’ under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, 1981.

The petition has been drawn by Advocate Vishal Tiwari and filed through Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Abhigya Kushwah.

The issue of states shutting down internet in the name of preventing cheating in public exams was raised before the Supreme Court on an earlier occasion by Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC). In September 2022, the Supreme Court, while considering SLFC's petition, had sought the Centre's response on the protocol for internet shutdowns.