New Delhi: There will be no interim stay on the Union government’s notifying a fact-checking unit (FCU) as per its amended Information Technology (IT) rules, the Bombay high court said on Wednesday (March 13).This comes more than a month after a two-judge bench of the high court delivered a split verdict on the validity of the specific rule dealing with the FCU and two days after a tie-breaker judge said there was no case for stopping the government from notifying an FCU.“The third judge has rendered his opinion. Consequently, the majority view is that the interim applications for stay and continuation of the previous statement (by the Union [government] not to notify the FCU) are rejected,” LiveLaw quoted the reconstituted two-judge bench as saying.Following the split verdict on January 31, the petitioners in the case, among whom is comedian Kunal Kamra, sought an interim stay on the FCU being notified.Rule 3(1)(b)(v), the amended rule that the petitioners have challenged, says that an FCU can identify content online relating to “any business of the central [Union] government” as “fake, false or misleading”.Once the FCU makes such an identification, social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook would either have to take down the content in question or add a disclaimer mentioning the FCU’s decision.In the split verdict made in January, Justice Gautam Patel said that rule 3(1)(b)(v) must be struck down but Justice Neela Gokhale upheld it.The court referred the matter to a third judge, Justice A.S. Chandurkar, for a decision in order to resolve the impasse. He was also meant to decide on the petitions seeking an interim stay.Justice Chandurkar hasn’t decided on the validity of the rule in question but on Monday (March 11), he said regarding the interim petition that there was no case for the government to be stopped from notifying an FCU.“In my opinion, no case is made out to direct the respondent (Centre) [the Union government] to continue its statement that the fact-checking unit would not be notified pending proceedings on the petitions,” he said according to the Press Trust of India.He also noted that the Union government said the FCU will not seek to censor political opinions, satire or comedy and that the FCU’s actions will still be subject to the court’s final decision on the rule in question.Given this, the “balance of convenience tilts in favour of the non-applicants [the Union government],” he said according to the Free Press Journal.Critics say the amended IT rules will allow the government to unilaterally and arbitrarily take decisions what is or isn’t true and pose a danger to the freedom of speech.The Union government had earlier said it would not notify the fact-checking unit until the high court took a decision on the rule in question.But solicitor general Tushar Mehta said after the split verdict that this assurance would continue only until the court took a decision on the interim stay application.