New Delhi, 01-02-2021

Continuing tide of complaints against programming on streaming platforms has spurred the Indian government to take some quick actions. On January 31, 2021, the government said it would soon release guidelines for regulating content on OTT platforms.

“We have received a lot of complaints against some serials available on OTT platforms. Films and serials released on OTT platforms and digital newspapers do not come under the purview of Press Council Act, Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act or Censor Board. We will come up with some guidelines on it soon,” Union minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said on Sunday.

Though the digital space was till now being governed by self regulatory codes, drafted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and informally blessed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), since earlier this year those set of the self regulatory codes had not found the blessings of the ministry after they were re-drafted.

The Indian government, through an official notification, brought content regulation and other aspects of policy-making for the digital sector under MIB earlier this year, setting at rest the confusion over which ministry – MIB or Meity – had jurisdiction over digital entertainment sector.

In recent times, content on OTT platforms has come under lot of criticism from various quarters for a variety of reasons, including hurting of sentiments of a particular community to incorrect depiction of armed forces to explicit content to raising issues that were not conducive for unrestricted viewing and/or were against national interest.

The latest case being that of `Tandav’, a nine-part political drama streaming on a global OTT platform. The web series has been accused of hurting religious sentiments and wrongful depiction of cops. Several police complaints have been lodged against the makers of the series and the Supreme Court has refused to hand out any interim relief against arrests.