The Vernacular Press Act was passed in .......... on the lines of the Irish…

Colonial governments in India frequently modeled their press-control legislation on precedent laws already used elsewhere in the British Empire, rather than drafting wholly original statutes -- borrowing both the legal mechanism and its severity from the earlier law.

The Vernacular Press Act was enacted in 1878 under Viceroy Lord Lytton to curb criticism of British rule appearing in Indian-language (vernacular) newspapers. It was explicitly modeled on the contemporaneous Irish Press Act, adopting the same mechanism: a magistrate could require the printer or publisher of a vernacular paper to sign a bond promising not to publish material likely to excite disaffection, and could seize press equipment on breach -- with no right of appeal to any court, exactly mirroring how the Irish law operated against the Irish press.

• 1968 falls nearly two decades after India's independence and the adoption of its own Constitution; the British administration that legislated vernacular press control had already ceased to exist by this date.

• 1887 does not correspond to any documented press-control enactment targeting vernacular newspapers; the significant vernacular press legislation of this era was passed nine years earlier.

• 1778 lies in the early East India Company period, decades before the Crown-administered Viceroy/Governor-General legislative machinery that produced this kind of press law had even been established.

The Act was passed in 1878.