The high court granted six weeks to the Centre to respond and listed the plea on October 4. The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought the Centre’s stand on a disclaimer prepared by the owner of a satirical website ‘Dowry Calculator.com’ in his plea against a communication directing that the website be blocked. A single-judge bench of Justice Subramonium Prasad said, “Without prejudice to the contentions of either side, a disclaimer has been handed over by Mr Siddharth Agarwal learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner. Mr Jain appearing for the respondent (Centre) is directed to take instructions regarding the same.” The high court granted six weeks to the Centre to respond and listed the plea on October 4. The petitioner Tanul Thakur had challenged the Centre’s communication of June 20, 2022, along with the report of an inter-ministerial committee constituted under the Information Technology Act, 2000, which directed that his website – http://www.dowrycalculator.com – should remain blocked. It is Thakur’s case that he registered the said domain name on May 4, 2011, and the website, a “tongue-in-cheek attempt to highlight the social evil of dowry”, was blocked in 2018. When the matter was taken up earlier on Thursday, senior advocate Siddharth Agarwal, appearing for Thakur, said that his client had made a written offer that he would make a disclaimer. However, the respondent in its order subsequently said that the “disclaimer is of no use”. The Centre’s counsel Asheesh Jain submitted that when such websites are accessed in remote parts of the country, people there may not be able to understand that it was a satire. The high court, however, asked that if it comes down to freedom of speech and expression (Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution), what kind of reasonable restrictions could be imposed in this case? At this point, Jain said, “If they can give a format of the disclaimer I can put it to the officer”. Thereafter, when the matter was taken up in the post-lunch session, Agarwal said that a draft of the disclaimer had been prepared and the same was submitted to the court and handed over to Jain. In January, the high court had noted that the Centre, by invoking the provisions of the Information Technology Rules, 2009, came to the conclusion that the website was not a satirical take. In May 2022, the high court had directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY ) to provide a copy of the original blocking order to the owner of the website, which was blocked based on a complaint from then Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi. The court had also directed the committee constituted by MeitY under the Blocking Rules, 2009, to give a post-decisional hearing to the counsel representing the website owner on May 23, 2022. A division bench of Justice Manmohan and Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma in an order had then recorded the Centre’s statement that the authorities are willing to give a post-decisional hearing to the website owner and also take “corrective measures” if found necessary.