'Historical Mistake Corrected': Prakash Javadekar On Babri Demolition
Swati Mathur (THE TIMES OF INDIA; February 1, 2021)

New Delhi: Union information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar said on Sunday his ministry will soon issue guidelines to regulate content on over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, in light of an increasing number of complaints against OTT content the ministry has received.

“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 the Press Council Act, Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act or Censor Board. We will come up with some guidelines on it soon,” Javadekar said.

The minister’s comments follow the recent controversy triggered by ‘Tandav’, the Amazon Prime web series that had to be censored despite its makers tendering an unconditional apology following multiple FIRs filed for hurting religious and caste sentiments.

Another web series – Mirzapur – was also pulled up by the Supreme Court for ‘maligning’ the image of the UP district by the same name.

The growing number of instances of online content on social media and OTT platforms running foul of public sentiments prompted the Indian government to examine regulatory mechanisms for OTT in other countries and draw from international best practices to tailor its own regulatory framework.

An internal government note TOI accessed also batted in favour of regulation, stressing the need to “streamline” the process through which websites and OTT platforms are set up in order to rein in “fly by night operators”.

Among other things, the government note considered following Australia’s example of asking Google and Facebook to share advertising revenues on news websites with newspaper publishers.