On Monday, the Foundation for Independent Journalism, a trust which owns news website ‘The Wire’, has moved the Delhi High Court, challenging the new rules introduced by the Centre to regulate digital media.
The case is listed for Tuesday before a division bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh of the High Court
On February 25, the government issued the new set of sweeping rules, Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to regulate social media companies, streaming and digital news content that will virtually bring these platforms under the ambit of government supervision.
Following the introduction of the new rules, the Internet Freedom Foundation had said that the new rules could likely mean government oversight and more censorship.
Meanwhile, DigiPub, an 11-member digital-only news association, has written to the Centre suggesting that the rules seem to go against the fundamental principle of news and its role in a democracy.
The Wire is one of the members of DigiPub.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editors of The Wire told that on a quick reading, the burdens being placed on publishers of digital news go beyond the basic restrictions on freedom of speech (and thus freedom of the press) envisaged by Article 19 and are therefore ultra vires the Constitution.
Varadrajan pointed out that the country’s Constitution does not give the power to the executive to judge suitability of content in media and that granting that to an inter-ministerial committee of bureaucrats will amount to killing freedom of the press in India. He said that the existing laws already define reasonable restrictions on press freedom under Article 19(2) of the Constitution and that an aggrieved reader or government official can seek legal remedy under that
Inputs from Scroll.