SC stays all petitions on regulation of content on OTT platforms pending in High Courts

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed all proceedings pending before various High Courts for regulation and functioning of Over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, etc. across the country.

Earlier, the apex court in a ruling issued a notice on a transfer petition filed by the Centre which includes the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Electronics and Technology and the Ministry of Law and Justice seeking to club all petitions filed in various high courts on the issue of regulating OTT platforms.

However, despite the order by the apex court various High Courts including the Punjab and Haryana High Court is proceeding in the issue, hence it is pending there. The bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud, observed that notice on transfer petition means that proceedings going on have to stay.

While staying the further proceedings of pleas pending in various High Courts, the bench stated that the case will now be heard after Holi on March 29.

The development comes in response to the public interest litigations filed by NGO Justice for Rights Foundation and another by lawyer Shashank Shekhar Jha, in which they have demanded has that a pre-screening committee be set up before the content on OTT platforms is streamed online. They sought an effective regulation to curb content on the OTT platforms.

As per reports, the plea further asserted that the self-regulation code or the Indian government's new IT Rules are not effective tools to curb the content that hurts the religious, social and regional sentiments of the public at large.

It needs to be mentioned here that the ruling comes after the Central Government on February notified a set of regulations for OTT platforms, which according to the Supreme Court lacked teeth. While the apex court stated that the regulations lacked provisions for enforcement, the Centre agreed to revise the rules. The new set of guidelines is called the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021.

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