13 Media houses question Constitutional validity of new IT rules in court

Chennai: Digital News Publishers Association on Wednesday filed a petition in the Madras High Court against the Central government enacted new IT rules. The Association, an umbrella forum of the 13 biggest news media houses of the country, questioned the Constitutional validity of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021).

Considering the plea, a bench consisting the Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy, sent a notice to the Union Ministries of Electronics and Information Technology and Information & Broadcasting, seeking its explanation on the contentions raised by the Media Association.

Articles 14 (equality), 19 (1) (a) and 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution that guarantee the right to freedom of speech and expression and right to the profession have blatantly been violated by the new IT rules, the petition said.

The bench observed that there is solid ground to believe the contentions raised by the petition against the Rules that give emergency powers to the authority concerned to block any information without any intimation to the media house that published the said information.

Rules 12, 14 and 16 Rule of the new IT Rules underline the apprehensions that the authority could initiate arm-twisting action against the media houses, the Madras High Court said.

The Rules empowers the Information and Broadcasting Secretary to take coercive action as an interim measure against the media if any information or part of it found to be inappropriate and can block the public access to that particular information while denying media an opportunity to explain.

While Rule 12 says that the publishers can constitute one or more self-regulatory body of them, Rule 14 authorise the I&B Ministry to constitute an inter-departmental committee with representatives from other Ministries.

The Court also granted the Association the liberty to approach the High Court if the Centre takes any coercive action against it for interim relief while declining its demand for an interim order from the HC to restrain the Union Government from taking any action under the said rules until a decision on the plea comes out.

The Union Ministries of Electronics and Information Technology and Information & Broadcasting have been directed to respond to the plea within two weeks.

The petition said that the words used to regulate content lime "half-truth, good taste, decency" are vague, undefined and subjective that leave broad scope for imminent misuse of the Rules by the authorities.

Digital News Publishers Association is a syndicate of 13 news media houses, including the ABP Network, Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar Corp, Express Network, HT Digital Streams, IE Online Media Services (part of The Indian Express Group), Jagran Prakashan, Lokmat Media, NDTV Convergence, TV Today Network, The Malayala Manorama, Times Internet Limited and Ushodaya Enterprises, established in 2018.