Holding that the search engines were violating the law by allowing such advertisements, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and R Banumathi granted the government 10 days time to convene a meeting of technical experts and representatives of search engines to devise ways to solve the problem.
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“You have to do something about this [such ads on search engines]”.
The court criticized the companies for not being able to stop the ads and said that they could not continue “illegal activity in the name of being an intermediary”, as indicated by this ANI report. It is not acceptable and this needs to be controlled. George asked the government to take action against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for hosting advertisements of tools, kits and clinics to help determine the sex of a foetus.
“They are patently violating the Indian law and are saying that they can not do anything”. They also argued that the advertisements on their platforms are not in violation of any laws, especially the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994, which decrees that sex determination and sex selection are offences and anyone abetting them is liable to be punished.
During the hearing, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said that companies were violating the PCPNDT Act by displaying advertisements on sex determination on their websites. It banned pre-natal sex determination.
Advocate Sanjay Parikh appearing for the petitioner said the earlier order of the court that these websites shall not advertise or sponsor any advertisement violating the provisions of the PCPNDT Act, should be reflected on the “home page” so that there is a real warning. The intention of the law is to prevent female feticides and control the declining sex ratio in the country.
Search engines namely Google, Bing and Yahoo were scolded by the Supreme Court, as the panel of Judges said, “Can these search engines continue to violate the law?”.
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The three companies were also asked to update their “terms of service” to include this order.
