Khushi Gupta
Published on: May 10, 2022 at 15:13 IST
The Supreme Court passed a blanket Order staying all the further Proceedings, before the High Courts, challenging the validity of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
The Centre presented a list of 15 such cases, where an order for Stay on further Proceedings would be required if the Apex Court was to finally take a call on the validity of these rules applicable to digital media, news portals and over-the-top (OTT) platforms.
The Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and AS Oka issued Notice to the concerned news organisations on a Transfer Petition filed by Centre and listed the matters for hearing on May 19.
The Order said, “We direct stay of further Proceedings in the High Courts in the respective cases or to be filed hereafter until the next date of hearing involving challenge to the Information Technology Rules, 2021 or the Cable Television Amendment Rules which are subject matter of proceedings before this court.”
The Supreme Court realised that with this batch of petitions, a clutch of petitions challenging hate speech and hate crimes required to be de-linked.
On hate speech matters, the Bench directed the Petition filed jointly by a former Patna High Court Judge Anjana Prakash and a journalist Qurban Ali demanding action against the organisers of the Dharam Sansad held in several places, including Haridwar (Uttarakhand), Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, to come up on May 19.
Even while staying the Proceedings before the High Courts in the challenge to the IT Rules, the bench said, “We are only staying the Proceedings in the High Courts. We won’t touch the Interim Orders passed therein.”