Supreme Court seeks Centre's response to plea for regulation of explicit content on OTTs

The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Central government in a plea seeking steps to prohibit the streaming of sexually explicit or inappropriate content on over-the-top (OTT) platforms in India and social media [Uday Mahurkar v. Union of India]..A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and AG Masih issued notice to X Corp, Netflix, Amazon, Ullu Digital, ALTBalaji, MUBI, Google, Apple and Meta as well. However, the Court also expressed that it may have a limited scope of interference in the matter. "This is either for the legislature or executive. As it is, we are facing allegations of encroaching into legislative (and) executive domains. Anyways, we will issue notice," Justice Gavai said..The Central government was represented today by Solicitor General of India (SG) Tushar Mehta. The Court has ordered the service of notice to the remaining respondents. "The plea raises an important concern with regard to the display of various objectionable, obscene and indecent content on OTT platforms and social media. SG says plea shall not be taken in any adverse way. It is submitted that some of the content is perverse...SG submits some regulations are in existence and some more being contemplated. Thus, we issue notice to respondents," the Court's order said. .Representing the petitioner today, Advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain raised concerns that inappropriate content is available online without any restriction."This is happening without any checks. I have also given complete list with seconds, etc. as to what is being shown without any checks on the social media platforms," Jain submitted. "I am not taking it in any adverse way. My worry is children are exposed to all of this. In some regular programs, the language etc. is such that it is perverted and two men cannot even sit together and see it. The only criteria they have is it is for '18 plus' (audience)," SG Tushar Mehta said, in response. The Court joined in voicing concerns that children may be exposed to inappropriate content. "Yes, we have seen children being given phone etc...to keep them busy for sometime," he pointed out. .We are being accused of interfering with legislative and executive functions: Justice BR Gavai.[Read Live Coverage]