The Delhi High Court refused on Monday to grant any interim relief to the publications The Quint and The Wire over the central government’s notice against them for non-compliance with the new IT Rules 2021, Live Law reported.
A vacation bench comprising Justices C Hari Shankar and Subramonium Prasad passed the order saying that the matter was pending before the regular division bench and that it would renotify their application for interim relief for hearing by the roster bench.
“Let me make it very clear. All they are doing is implementing the notification. You have only made out the case that they should not have taken coercive action. It is not your case that the implementation is against the Rules,” the court remarked.
While accepting fact-checking website Alt News’ challenge against the new IT rules 2021, the same vacation bench issued a notice that the petition was on parity with The Quint and The Wire’s challenges on which the division roster bench had already issued notice.
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On February 25, the I&B Ministry issued the Information Technology (Guidelines For Intermediaries And Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules, 2021). They were released to regulate content in OTT platforms, social media intermediaries and digital news media. According to the new guidelines, the “news and current affairs publishers are expected to follow the journalistic conduct of Press Council of India and the Programme Code under the Cable Television Network Act, which are already applicable to print and TV.”
Ever since the Centre issued the new rules, there have been a series of petitions filed against them, letters sent to ministry, and meetings held with them regarding the same.
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Following the release of the draft, the Foundation for Independent Journalism, publisher of The Wire; founding editor of The Wire MK Venu; the director and co-founder of The Quint Ritu Kapur; and the founder and editor-in-chief of The News Minute Dhanya Rajendran had filed a petition to strike down the new rules that pertain to regulating content on digital news media platforms as the elements and terms are different and new in the IT Rules 2021, when compared to its parent IT Act.
On March 10, in another incident, the Kerala High Court passed an interim order restraining the Central government from taking any coercive action against the legal news portal Live Law for non-compliance with provisions under Part III of the new IT Rules 2021. Live Law had filed a writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of the new IT Guidelines and Regulations stating they were “arbitrary, vague, disproportionate and unreasonable” restrictions on digital news media and social media intermediaries.