H and 2009 Rules have, while excessively delegating to the Executive, failed to instil adequate safeguards to prevent abusive, excessive, and arbitrary exercise of its powers. In particular, the “necessary or expedient” standard adopted under sub-clause (1) of Section 69 to authorise electronic surveillance woefully falls short of “the test of proportionality” - a sine-qua-non to curtail fundamental rights under Articles 19(1)(a) and 21. It may also be remembered that the Wiretapping judgment dealt with Section 5(2) of the Telegraph Act, which requires a public emergency or an issue of public safety for the provision to even be triggered. Despite the fact that surveillance under the IT Act is not only comparable, but is perhaps more invasive than telephone tapping, there is no explanation for why this higher threshold of public emergency/public safety is absent from Section 69 of the IT Act. This inexplicable difference in Section 5(2) of the Telegraph Act and Section 69 of the IT Act, in itself, is evidence that Section 69 of the IT Act is capricious and irrational. For this, and other reasons, the Petitioners contend that the Impugned Provisions and Impugned Notification suffer from the vice of manifest arbitrariness, apart from the fact that they are overbroad and unconstitutionally vague. On these, and other grounds (as set out in the Writ Petition), the Petitioners herein have been constrained to approach this Hon’ble Court under Article 32 of the Constitution of India, in public interest. LIST OF DATES 1972 By virtue of Telegraph (Amendment) Act, 1972, Section 5(2) of the Telegraph Act, 1885 was amended to authorise the Central and State Governments, or any officers on their behalf, to lawfully intercept or detain