The Madras High Court on Thursday stayed the operation of certain sub-clauses of the recently introduced Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, passing orders similar to the one by the Bombay High Court on the matter last month.

The sub-clauses — (1) and (3) of Rule 9, which were stayed yesterday, stipulated the adherence to the Code of Ethics. They were inserted into the original IT Rules in February this year,  PTI, Telegraph and legal website Bar&Bench.com  reported.

Incidentally, the Bombay High Court had on August 14, granted an interim stay to the operation of parts of the Information Technology Rules, 2021 which require that all online publishers follow the “code of ethics”.

The interim orders came on a batch of petitions filed by Carnatic musician T M Krishna and Digital News Publishers Association, comprising 13 media outlets, which also had digital arms, and another individual, challenging the constitutional validity of the new rules.

“Prima facie, there is substance to petitioner’s grievance that the oversight mechanism to control the media by government may rob the media of its independence, and the fourth pillar, so to say, of democracy may not at all be there,” Bar&bench.com  quoted the Chennai court as saying.

The court adjourned the matter to the last week of October, when it was informed that similar cases pending before the Supreme Court are scheduled to come up for hearing in the first week of next month.

Earlier, the Bombay High Court had stayed certain parts of the digital regulations, saying coercive actions should not be taken by the government against the petitioners, a digital legal news publisher The Leaflet and a Mumbai-based journalist.

The petitions had claimed that the new regulations were ‘vague’, ‘draconian’, and bound to have a ‘chilling effect’ on the freedom of press and right to free speech guaranteed by the Constitution.