(This story originally appeared in on Sep 11, 2018)

(This story was originally published in the Economic Times on 11/09/2018.)

Members of Parliament who are part of a consultative committee on information and broadcasting have urged the government and Indian Institute of Mass Communication to study how fake news and misinformation were leading to increased incidents of crime, violence and other law and order problems.Since March, at least 20 people have been killed in mob lynchings sparked by misinformation. The violence has been blamed on rumours of child kidnappings, being spread on WhatsApp. The app and government are scrambling to prevent such incidents. The Centre has made it clear that WhatsApp needs to find solutions to deal with the spread of misinformation that leads to crimes such as mob-lynching and revenge porn and has to follow Indian law.Information and broadcasting minister Rajyavardhan Rathore on Monday chaired the consultative committee meeting, which was attended by MPs including Samajwadi Party's Neeraj Shekhar, Trinamool Congress’ Moon Moon Sen and BJP's Sanjay Jaiswal were present. Several members did not attend the meeting owing to the Bharat Bandh called by the Congress.ET has learnt that IIMC has already trained its faculty in Google and Facebook certified ways of detecting fake news and fighting fake news has also been made part of the institution's curriculum. An MP who spoke to ET said the suggestion was made considering the chaos misinformation creates and that both minister Rathore and IIMC director-general KG Suresh said they would look into the suggestion."Many of these groups are closed and limited to 200 people, making it impossible for even police to track where a rumour originated. A comprehensive study on how these groups operated and media helped in the spread of fake news and how it can be checked can be useful. It can even be used by media organisations to understand the dangers," the MP said.An enhanced budget for IIMC, regular faculty positions, filling up of vacancies, community radio, a hostel of international standards were also discussed in the meeting. It was suggested, ET has learnt, that the minister take up the hostel project that is stuck with the Ridge Management Board with the Delhi LG.When contacted, IIMC DG Suresh said the meeting was fruitful. Without speaking about what went on in the meeting, he said several important issues were discussed. "The focus for the institute next year is to consolidate the campuses that we have. We hope to get Kerala and Aizwal campuses ready this year, following which permanent campuses in Jammu and Amravati will come up. We also want to extend courses such as advertising, public relations and regional journalism to other campuses soon, apart from introducing ways that will benefit local students from enrolling into these courses," he said.