SC notice to Centre on PIL seeking ban on ‘obscene’ content on OTT platform

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and others on a petition seeking a ban on sexually explicit content on over-the-top (OTT) and social media platforms even as it said it’s for the legislature or the executive to take measures to deal with the issue.

Noting that “present petition raises an important concern with regard to the display of various objectionable, obscene and indecent contents on OTT platforms and social media”, a Bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih also issued notice to X Corp, Netflix, Amazon, Ullu Digital, ALTBalaji, MUBI, Google, Apple and Meta on a petition filed by Uday Mahurkar and four others.

“This is not within our domain. As it is, there is a lot of allegation that we are encroaching upon the legislative and executive powers,” Justice Gavai told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta who said the government would not take it as an adversarial litigation.

Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar had recently questioned the Supreme Court for setting a timeline for the President to take decisions on Bills referred to her by Governors and questioned the alleged misuse of Article 142, saying the Supreme Court cannot fire a “nuclear missile" at democratic forces. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey had said Parliament and state assemblies should be shut if the Supreme Court had to make laws.

Mehta, however, said it was not an adversarial issue. “Kindly monitor it here. We will come out with something which balances the freedom of speech while (Article) 19 (2) is taken care of,” Mehta said, pointing out that certain contents circulating on OTT platforms were “perverse”.

Noting that some regulations were there, Mehta said, certain additional measures were under contemplation.

On behalf of the petitioners, advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain submitted it was not an adversarial litigation and the petition raised a serious concern over obscene contents being displayed on OTT and social media platforms without any checks or restrictions.

“Mr Solicitor, you should do something,” Justice Gavai told Mehta.

Noting that children are more exposed to such contents nowadays. Jain said, “Some of the things which are in regular programmes, the language, the contents… is of such a nature that it is not only vulgar, it is perverse.”

India