The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the Centre to respond to a petition challenging the new Information Technology rules which seek to regulate digital news media.
A bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to submit their responses on the plea by April 16, the next date of hearing.
The petition filed by Quint Digital Media Ltd has been tagged with another similar petition filed earlier by the Foundation for Independent Journalism and The Wire.
Validity challenged
The latest petition has challenged the Constitutional validity of the IT Rules under the provisions of Information Technology Act, 2000.
“The present petition challenges the IT Rules, 2021 only in so far as they affect digital news portals, and is not with reference to ‘publishers of online curated content’, that it, OTT media platforms or any other entities sought to be regulated by the impugned Rules,” said the plea.
It said the new rules purport to apply to ‘publishers of news and current affairs content’ as part of digital media, and consequently regulate these entities under the Rules by imposing Government oversight and a ‘Code of Ethics’ which stipulates such vague conditions as ‘good taste’, ‘decency’ and prohibition of ‘half-truths’.
“Creating a differential classification by way of subordinate legislation, when not contemplated by the parent IT Act is an overreach by itself and this has been done to specifically target digital news portals, by subjecting them to an unprecedented regulatory burden and State interference, which no other form of news publication is subject to,” the petition said.
The petitioners said they bring out a wholly digital news and current affairs publication called ‘The Quint’ and are directly impacted by the new IT Rules, which is also an overreach by subordinate legislation.
