New Delhi: The government told the Supreme Court that new rules regulating hate speech, fake news, defamatory posts and anti-national activities on social media would be ready by January 15.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court transferred to itself all cases pending at high courts including Madras, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier, Facebook and WhatsApp sought the transfer of the cases to the Supreme Court, and the apex court said that all cases linked to social media would be heard in the last week of January
The Tamil Nadu government had resisted the social media companies' move to have the cases transferred to the Supreme Court.
Attorney General KK Venugopal said WhatsApp and Facebook should decrypt any information the government wants for analysis.
The techie companies argued that they had no "key" to decrypt information and they can only cooperate with the authorities.