Sushree Mohanty
The Supreme Court has passed a stay order on all procedures forthcoming under all the High Courts across the nation that looked for imposing regulations on the working of Over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar etc.
The bench presided by Justice DY Chandrachud passed the stay order on all the pending petitions before different high courts and said it would hear the applications on the issue in the April second week.
Justice MR Shah, also included in the bench, said that there are numerous high courts where these cases are forthcoming and procedures of every one of these cases shall be stayed.
The Supreme Court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) documented by advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha, on behalf of Justice for Rights Foundation for directing the Over-the-top stages by an independent body.
The plea looked for an appropriate board and organization for management and regulating the subjects’ contents on the Over the top platforms and other digital media platforms.
The Centre likewise recorded an appeal requesting to transfer the cases that are forthcoming in various high courts for designing a framework on the guideline of OTT stages.
Earlier, the bench had given a notification on Centre’s supplication and combined it with different petitions.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Information and broadcasting, in its affidavit have assured stricter regulations on the subject matter being aired on such digital platforms.
It additionally expressed that the new Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 has been circulated to lay emphasis on the matter.
Earlier, the top court had directed the Centre to file a response on the steps taken by the government in order to regulate the digital platforms and had requested that it document an affidavit statement regarding the matter.