Jharkhand High Court orders immediate restoration of Internet services 

The court also ordered the Hemant Soren government to not suspend Internet services in any form for conducting any examination without its permission

Internet services were restored in Jharkhand after the High Court pulled up the Hemant Soren government for suspending Internet services to conduct the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission-Combined Graduate Level (JSSC-CGL) examination on September 21 and 22.

On September 20, Principal Secretary of the Jharkhand Home Department Vandana Dadel issued the order that Internet services would be suspended in the entire State from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. on September 21 and 22 to ensure the CGL examination remained fair and free from malpractice. The order said there was a possibility that rumours would be spread and question papers would leak during the examination.

Following the order, the Jharkhand State Bar Council chairperson Rajendra Krishna wrote a letter to the Acting Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court Sujit Narayan Prasad through the HC’s Registrar General, mentioning the government’s notification on the suspension of Internet services in the State from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. on September 21 and 22.

The letter was converted into a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) and a Division Bench of Justices Ananda Sen and Anubha Rawat Choudhary presided over the court.

During the hearing, Mr. Krishna said that due to the suspension of Internet services, all commercial activities, including banking and transport, had been grossly affected.

The Bench directed the Government to file its response to the petition within four weeks. However, the High Court did not prohibit the Government from suspending Internet services on September 22.

On the evening of September 21, it was intimated through bulk messages that Internet services would be suspended from 4 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. The Bench on Sunday (September 22, 2024) ordered the State government to restore Internet services with immediate effect, which was done by 2 p.m.

The Principal Secretary of the Home Department and officials of telecom service providers were present when the order was issued. The next hearing of the case will be on November 14, 2024.

“When we sat yesterday, i.e., Saturday (21.09.2024), and refused to grant interim order considering the overall situation, if at all there was any emergent situation, the parties including the State should have approached this Court for modification of the order. This direction by the State authority to shut down the entire service after the order dated 21.09.2024, in fact, nullifies and modifies the judicial order passed by this Court. This prima facie amounts to criminal contempt also,” the court said in its order.

Ms. Dadel was asked to appear before the court with the entire file to see what emergency had motivated the suspension of all Internet services, superseding the earlier notification. Ms. Dadel submitted that during the intervening night of September 21 and 22, at about 00.00 hours (midnight), some intelligence inputs were received, based on which a high-level decision had been taken to suspend Internet services across the State.

“This Court fails to understand that if the State Government had taken a decision past midnight today, then how the Service Provider, yesterday at 07.45 PM informed that the Government had directed to shut down the entire internet on 22nd September, 2024. We are not in a position to reconcile these statements,” the court said in its order.

The court then further ordered no Internet services could be suspended in the State without its leave till the pendency of the writ petition.

Published - September 22, 2024 08:17 pm IST