Maharashtra govt floats tender for fact check unit to track ‘malicious, inaccurate' content

The Print

4 hours ago

Brijesh Singh, principal secretary, DGIPR, told ThePrint: 'Every day, we treat media reports as feedback on governance. During his previous tenure, Chief Minister Fadnavis made our approach clear: 'either the media is right, or we are right. If they are right, we need to take note. If they are wrong, we should inform them of factual inaccuracies'. This unit serves exactly that purpose.'
The unit will be set up under the state government's Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR), and will use technological interventions to speedily screen all information concerning the state government and check its credibility across languages for any supposedly malicious or inaccurate content.
Mumbai: The Devendra Fadnavis-led Mahayuti government in Maharashtra has floated a tender to set up a fact-check unit to track all content about the state government across traditional media as well as social and digital media platforms.
'It is not intended to have any chilling effect (on the public) or create the fears some people are expressing,' he added.
Government departments routinely identify any alleged discrepancies in media reports and send rejoinders as and when required. Singh said the fact-check unit will make this exercise more thorough and faster, bringing in technological interventions.
'We lack the capability to handle the current volume of misinformation, and it requires significant technical capabilities. When altered photos claim a bridge has collapsed, or old images are used out of context, we need to respond promptly and accurately, pointing out, for instance, that an image is from 2016. This requires forensic capabilities, making technical expertise essential,' Singh said.
According to the tender, which ThePrint has seen, the fact-check unit will have a dashboard that would offer detailed reports and alerts on any 'misinformation, disinformation and malinformation' detected.
The dashboard, the tender states, should help government officials to quickly review the content that has been flagged, understand the scope of the issue and respond in a timely manner.
The agency chosen to set up the unit will also conduct training sessions and workshops for officials from the DGIPR and other government departments on how to use the dashboard, and view and analyse reports.
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'Fact-check unit proposal legally vetted'
The Bombay High Court had in September last year declared a 2023 amendment in the Centre's Information Technology Rules, as part of which the government planned to fact-check social media content, as 'unconstitutional'.
The amended rules were to restrain social media 'intermediaries' from publishing content about the government which its own fact-check unit identified as fake.
Multiple petitions from organisations such as the Editors Guild of India, News Broadcasters and Digital Association, Association of Indian Magazines as well as comedian Kunal Kamra had challenged the amendment, saying the rules infringe upon freedom of speech and expression.
In a 2023 letter, the Editors Guild of India had said: 'While admittedly there is a problem of misinformation and fake news, especially in the online space, efforts to check such content have to be by independent bodies that are not under the sole purview of the government, lest they become tools to clamp down on voices of dissent.'
In December last year, the Centre filed a special leave petition against the high court's decision in the Supreme Court. It is, however, yet to be admitted.
According to Singh, however, the Maharashtra government has got the proposal for the DGIPR's fact-check unit legally vetted and it will not be in contravention of the court's orders.
'The central fact-check unit was ruled unconstitutional by courts in an earlier decision because it required platforms to take down content based on the unit's report. Our approach is fundamentally different: it is not binding. The state government lacks such enforcement powers. Since that ruling, PIB (Press Information Bureau) has continued fact-checking, as have many other states,' Singh said.
What the tender says
According to the tender document, the fact-checking unit is expected to track social and digital media platforms, websites, online news aggregators and blogs for the state government to identify and respond to 'instances of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation being published' in a timely manner.
'If someone posts false information—say, claiming a statue has been desecrated somewhere—the government has a responsibility to respond with accurate information. Our primary objectives are serving public interest and increasing transparency and trust,' Singh told ThePrint.
The unit will be expected to validate and assess the credibility of content not just in English, but also in Hinglish (an informal blend of Hindi and English) as well as regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Malayalam, Punjabi and Bengali.
The tender document states the agency setting up the fact-check unit should also provide a solution to conduct predictive analytics so that the government can identify potential outbreaks of alleged misinformation based on historical patterns and social media activity.
'Using AI, it must forecast which topics are likely to be misrepresented, manipulated, or misused, allowing government agencies to respond proactively and mitigate potential damage,' it says.
Further, the agency selected to set up the fact-check unit will enable sorting the allegedly malicious content into categories based on why it is malicious—whether it is inflammatory, insulting, obscene, profane or adverse. It will be required to detect deepfakes as well as content using code language with a 'harmful intent without explicit terminology'.
The agency's solution will also classify accounts allegedly using media manipulation tactics to gain social media traction, posts that make derogatory remarks about someone based on their identity, and content by entities lacking credibility or verifiable accuracy, among other things, the tender document states.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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