New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has refused to stay the implementation of new IT rules for digital news portals. The bench was addressing the petitions challenging the Centre's notice asking digital news portals to comply with the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
The IT Rules, 2021 clubs news portals with social media and differentiates it from print media. The petition called the move an unfair and irrational classification. It also pointed out that the new rules will allow the government to control news by deleting, modifying, blocking, censoring, and compelling apology.
The petition read that the IT Rules, 2021 introduces digital portals with news and current affairs content as a specific and targeted class to be subject to regulation by a loose-ranging Code of Ethics, said The Indian Express report. The new rules will allow the Central Government officers to oversee the content shared by the news portals.
The Centre had warned the news portals that "consequences will follow" if they did not comply with the rules. Senior Advocate Nitya Ramakrishna argued that the central government cannot sit in judgement over the content of news media. She added that the government is coercing news portals into a disciplinary regime of the Central government.
The petitions were filed by Quint Digital Media Ltd and its director Ritu Kapur; Foundation for Independent Journalism (publisher of The Wire); and Pravda Media (owner of the fact-checking website Alt News).
The Quint had argued that the executive power of the Rule which will virtually dictate content to digital news portals violates Article 14 and Article 19 (1) of the Indian Constitution, reported The Indian Express.
The court observed that the petitioners did not make a case that the notice is contrary to the Rules. "You've challenged the Rules, made an interim application for stay of the Rules; that application has come before the division bench on at least two occasions. The action they are taking now is the only implementation of those Rules," said the vacation bench of Justice C Hari Shankar and Justice Subramonium Prasad.
The bench specified that the recent notice is only for the implementation of rules and pointed out that the petitioners haven't received a stay against the rules from the roster bench.