The Madras High Court on Wednesday issued notice in a plea filed by the Digital News Publishers Association and journalist Mukund Padmanabhan. The plea challenged the constitutionality of the new IT rules, LiveLaw reported.

The DNPA comprises print and TV media “with a digital presence”. In its plea, it contended that online news portals of legacy media houses, which run newspapers and TV channels, do not come under the purview of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

The court heard the plea and tagged the matter with the writ petition filed by Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna, for which it had issued notice on June 10. The bench also granted liberty to the petitioners to approach the high court in case of any coercive action taken against them.

According to LiveLaw, the plea stated that Part III of the Rules imposed an "arbitrary, unjustified, undue and unfair oversight into the acts of the petitioner's member media houses, which opens the door to suppressing freedom of speech and the independence of news media in the country, which has been upheld by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in a catena of judgments." It stated that the respondents failed to acknowledge the petitioners as legacy media houses, alleging wrongful classification.

The plea further alleged that certain rules sought to curb the freedom of speech and expression, as well as freedom of press by proscribing content on the basis of vague and subjective grounds. Complying with the rules will lead to a "situation of over-regulation and unnecessary complication of a sector that is already well-regulated and compliant," the plea said.

The DNPA was one of the participants in an interaction in March between union Minister Prakash Javadekar. Digital-only platforms were not invited. Unsurprisingly, journalists and editors with digital outlets slammed the DNPA’s demand to be excluded from the rules, stating that “traditional media” had thrown digital outlets under the bus.