With the Centre already slugging it out in court over regulation of content on Web portals, the Union health ministry appears to have hit a roadblock in its bid to block sex-determination guidance available on numerous websites.
After a series of meetings, the ministry of communications and information technology has informed the health ministry that “nothing much could be done with the websites hosted outside India”.
Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have merely given undertakings to the ministry of communications and information technology that they would only 'stop carrying advertisements and sponsored links on sex determination' and Google and Yahoo! have made it clear that 'nothing more can be done' on the issue.
The health ministry had approached the ministry of communications and information technology saying that some sex-determination guidance, which includes 'Chinese gender prediction, gender testing kits, baby gender prediction, pre-natal diagnostic techniques, information on how to conceive a baby boy', freely available on the Internet, were 'in violation of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act'.
The health ministry had also argued that blocking 'these sites would be a step forward in containing the rising cases of female foeticide in the country'.
However, the communications and information technology ministry has told the ministry of health that 'what is available on the Internet on this particular issue cannot be treated as advertisement, but information'.
Communications and IT ministry officials claimed that the PNDT act 'is only meant for India' and that “they cannot regulate the websites hosted outside the country”.