The Bombay high court on Saturday stayed two provisions of the new IT Rules – rules 9(1) and 9(3) – which say that digital news media and publishers should adhere to the ‘Code of Ethics laid out in the rules.
The court was trying petitions filed by The Leaflet and Nikhil Wagle against the new rules. The bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G.S. Kulkarni, though, looked out that the relief was only relevant to the two petitioners in question.
The rules being stayed, the high court noted, prima facie violate the right to freedom of speech under Article 19 of the constitution and also went against the IT Act, under which the new rules were formed.
“In so far as Rule 9 is involved, we have discovered it prima facie to be an invasion of the petitioner’s rights under Article 19(1)(a). We have also believed that it goes beyond the substantive law. Hence we have stayed clauses 9(1) and 9(3). The rule does not stay in its totality,” the bench said in court, according to LiveLaw. The full order is not yet available.
The bench, but, declined to stay rules 14 and 16, which too the petitioners had stated conflict with. Rule 14 deals with the creation of an inter-departmental committee as an oversight tool over digital media. Since no such committee has been established yet, the high court said there is no “immediate urgency” to deal with the matter.
Rule 16 gives the Union government power to prevent access to published material. The bench said similar provisions also exist in the 2009 Intermediary Rules, and the petitioners had not questioned those.
On Friday, the bench had maintained its order in the matter but questioned the government on the necessity to include new rules in the first place.
The petitions filed by The Leaflet and Wagle are among a slew of petitions filed by various media organisations in high courts across the country, claiming that the new IT rules infringe both the constitution and the IT Act, which they were constructed under. The first such plea was filed by The Wire, its founding editor M.K. Venu and The News Minute editor Dhanya Rajendran.
