What is the order?
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The Supreme Court ordered search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing to immediately stop displaying advertisements relating to pre-natal sex determination tests.
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It also directed the Union government to constitute a nodal agency to monitor and trigger search engines to crack down on online pre-natal sex determination advertisements.
What is the case?
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The apex court was hearing a petition filed by Dr. Sabu Mathew George in 2008 in the background of increasing instances of female foeticide.
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The petition had contended that pre-natal sex determination tests continue with impunity despite being made illegal in 1994.
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It also had highlighted that search engines violated Indian laws by displaying prenatal sex determination advertisements.
What was SC’s order?
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The nodal agency should receive complaints about illegal online advertisements under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994.
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It should communicate the tip-offs to online search engines which would delete these advertisements within 36 hours of getting the information.
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This interim arrangement will continue till it took a final decision on the continued existence of online sex selection ads.
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In the previous order, the SC had concluded that it was the liability of these search engines to check for pre-natal sex determination advertisements and develop in-house methods to prohibit such content.
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As follow up to this order, the search engines had developed a technique called “auto block” which prohibited advertisements on sex determination.