Government of India is framing new rules and regulations  to check hate speech, fake news, defamatory posts and anti-national activities on social media .Government revealed this in the country’s highest court that the draft will be finalized by 15th of January 2020.The Supreme Court of India  also transferred all cases pending at the Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh High Courts to their jurisdiction to have a hearing there itself. The Supreme Court has said that all the cases concerned with the social media will be heard in the last week of January.

In India the social media giants were facing criticism from the government for spreading political defamation news . Facebook and WhatsApp had already taken measures to check this . They also sought the transfer of the cases to the Supreme Court since they could have a bearing on national security. The Attorney General had argued in the court that Whatsapp and Facebook after coming to India cannot deny the demands of the government to decrypt information .

.The two companies said they didn't have the "key" to decrypt information and they can only cooperate with the authorities.

"The government wants the key from the house owner and the owner says he doesn't have the key," said a Supreme Court bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose.

In the meantime ,the Internet Freedom Association has also filed a petition at the top court which is already pending before another bench. The petitioner has already requested the Court not to pass a judgment  trampling on the rights of citizens.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the centre, said the move to finalise rules for social media is not a ploy to breach privacy of citizens, but is meant to protect national security and sovereignty.

Mr Mehta denied allegations by some of the petitioners that the proposed move to pin liability on social media firms to trace the originator of a particular message or content is the government's strategy to "trample an individual's privacy".

The issue  is already an ongoing subject for serious debate in the TV channels and most of them feels that if the government brings in new set of rules for social media it’s going to be an invasion into citizens’ privacy .