Google India, Yahoo! India and Microsoft, which host the most popular search engines, have told the government that they have blocked Indian users from accessing advertisements on pre-natal sex determination tests. These companies have said that their search engines do not provide any sponsored links within India on sex selection or determination.
The practise of determining sex of the foetus prior to birth stands banned in India since 1996, hence advertising for same is also illegal. The companies have communicated this in a response to a direction from department of information technology which asked them to ensure under Information technology Act, 2000 that no advertisements of sponsored links in respect of sex selection should appear on search results on their websites.
The two online portals, Yahoo India and MSN Search Engine have informed the Centre that their search engines do not provide any such sponsored links within India on sex selection or determination, something they ensure through due diligence. The Indian subsidiary of Google has also claimed that its search engine does not allow users from India to search websites on pre-natal sex determination. However, Google admits that the surveillance is not foolproof and there could be cases of inadvertent slippage.
The company adds that the moment such an aberration comes to its notice, ‘prompt and effective’ action is taken to disable such sites. Google has told the Centre that whenever an advertiser chooses to target users in India, the access to such advertisements is blocked to users with Indian IP address. Further, the search engine said that it has developed a technology that helps the company implement its advertisement policy by preventing ads from appearing on certain ‘keywords’ on the Google website. The list of such keywords is constantly upgraded and there are on-going efforts to ensure that the list is comprehensive.
The list of such keywords which have been blocked from triggering or sponsored results now include – sex determination, determination of sex and gender, male and female selection method, gender determination, gender pre-selection, gender prediction, gender selection, sex pre-selection, sex prediction, sex selection among others.
The ministry of health maintains that promotion of sex determination on the websites is an offence under the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition and Regulation) Act and had written a letter to the ministry of communication and information technology to take necessary action against violation. Earlier Supreme Court had served notices to Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft for displaying ‘sex determination’ ads after a public interest litigation was filed in the apex court brought the violation to the court’s notice. However, the issue flared up when in December, the CPI(M) leader, Brinda Karat demanded that the Google India chief be arrested for beaming sex determination ads on Google India searches despite court notices.
