The MeitY had announced Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics guidelines on 25th February 2021 which had evoked the Anti-CAA kind of response from the industry. Several High Courts (Kerala, Bombay and Madras)came up with their own interim orders truncating the notification and the matter landed up in Supreme Court.
Now an amendment notification has been issued on 6th June 2022 for which public comments have been invited. A public consultation meeting with stakeholders was also conducted yesterday by the honourable minister Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar.
The window for public comments will be open upto July 6th.
The amendment mainly related to the Grievance Appellate Committee to be set up under the following rule:
Appeal to Grievance Appellate Committee(s): –
(a) The Central Government shall constitute one or more Grievance Appellate Committees, which shall consist of a Chairperson and such other Members, as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint;1
(b) Any person aggrieved by an order made by the Grievance Officer under clause (a) and clause (b) of sub-rule (2) of rule 3 may prefer an appeal to the Grievance Appellate committee having jurisdiction in the matter within a period of 30 days of receipt of communication from the Grievance Officer;
(c) The Grievance Appellate Committee shall deal with such appeal expeditiously and shall make an endeavour to dispose of the appeal finally within 30 calendar days from the date of receipt of the appeal;
(d) Every order passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee shall be complied by the concerned Intermediary.
The objective of this appellate committee is to address the complaints about content removal received by an intermediary when its decision to remove or not remove a content may be dissented to by a platform user or member of public.
During the public consultation, several thoughts were exchanged. However the discussion failed to address the action that can follow the decision of the Grievance Appellate Committee.
Also some of the discussions revolved around the constitution of the committee and whether it has to be managed by legal/judicial officers or members of the Government.
It appeared that no thought has been spared on the acceptability of the proposal without amendment to the ITA 2000 itself.
At present ITA 2000 has a statutory mechanism of grievance redressal which includes the Adjudicator and the Appellate Tribunal. Though the effectiveness of this system may be questioned, the fact remains that these are part of the law and cannot be superseded by the notification.
However before the dispute reaches the Adjudication, any effort at resolving the dispute through ADR process including Ombudsman, Mediation or With recourse Arbitration can be tried. However at the end of such process if the dispute remains unresolved, it has to be referred to the statutory grievance redressal system which in this case is the Adjudication under Section 46 of ITA 2000.
Hence the proposed Grievance Appellate Committee has a subordinate relationship with the Adjudication process and need not be manned by a high level committee with judicial officers. It can be handled by the officials of Meity with or without some representation from outside experts. If the Meity adopts an ODR approach, it can involve experts from the industry and resolve disputes like a sub committee of the Meity subject to further appeal lying before the Adjudicator. It would be sufficient if the sub committee is headed by an officer of the rank equivalent to the IT Secretaries of the State or below.
Any attempt to make this committee’s decision binding on the Adjudicators would be ultra-vires the Act. A clarification that appeals about the decision of the committee lies with the Adjudicator would be in order.
I hope the Meity takes this view into consideration.
Naavi
