Truth Pro Foundation India (TPFI), the non-profit company that runs Pratidhvani, an independent Kannada news portal, has challenged in the Karnataka high court the new Information Technology Rules, which seek to regulate digital news media.

The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the petition alleges, are ultra vires the IT Act 2000, under which they have been framed. The rules also impose vague and subjective grounds for regulation, it continues, reported The Wire, which itself has challenged in a Delhi court the digital norms.

Pratidhvani is the fourth digital news publication to legally challenge the new IT rules, after The Wire, LiveLaw and The Quint — all pure play digital news portals.

In a brief summary, The Wiresaid, at the start of the petition Pratidhvani has laid out why it is challenging the new rules: “The present Petition challenges the… [IT Rules, 2021] as being ultra vires the new Information Technology Act, 2000… in as much as they set up a classification of ‘publishers of news and current affairs content’ (“digital news portals”) as part of ‘digital media’, and seek to regulate these news portals under Part III of the Rules… by imposing Government oversight and a ‘Code of Ethics’, which stipulates such vague conditions as ‘good taste’, ‘decency’, etc. – matter nowhere within the contemplation of the parent Act.”

The petition says it is only challenging the IT Rules as they affect digital news portals, and not OTT platforms or other entities.

The Foundation for Independent Journalism (which runs The Wire), its founding editor M.K. Venu and The NewsMinute editor Dhanya Rajendran had together filed the first legal challenge to the new IT rules. On March 9, the Delhi high court issued notice to the federal government on this petition. The date for the next hearing is April 16.