THURSDAY, August 14, (News Locale) - The display of sex-selection promoting advertisements by search engine giants Google, Yahoo and Microsoft has not gone down well with the Indian Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the Apex Court issued notices to the government, Google India, Yahoo India and Microsoft Corporation regarding a PIL seeking a ban on the display of such ads.

This action was taken following a writ petition filed by Dr. Sabu Mathew George contending that display of gender selection ads was contrary to the provisions contained in the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostics Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act.

Dr George has also named the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Communications and IT as respondents in this petition because they failed to take action against the search engines although these ads were brought to their notice.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan admitted the PIL and directed the government and the three companies to respond to the allegations.

The PIL is asking all three companies to stop displaying ads promoting sex selection techniques. It also asks the Center to take appropriate action should the companies not comply and halt all forms of gender selection ads.

In India determination of the sex of an unborn baby is banned courtesy the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostics Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act, which came into effect in 1994 and was amended in 2003. The main aim of the Act is to stop female feticide. Desire for male babies in India drives women to seek gender selection techniques to know the sex of their unborn child.

The Act calls for "Prohibition for any advertisement, in any form, including internet, regarding facilities of the prenatal determination of sex or sex selection before conception available at such center, lab, clinic or some other place."

However it must be pointed out that while ads displayed on the search engines like Google and Yahoo are geo-targeted with specific countries in mind, they are randomly placed by an algorithm and not manually. All three companies named in the PIL are yet to comment.

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