NEW DELHI: Days after the Centre pulled out the ‘contentious’ revised draft of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that the government is moving forward with an ‘open mind’ and would have extensive consultation on it.
“We are very flexible and open-minded on this. We want this creator economy to flourish and the new medium to come up in a proper way. We are encouraging them. We want to make sure that whatever we do, we do after taking all the diverse views into consultation. We will have a series of extensive consultations,” said the minister.
The ministry last week announced that it is working on the draft and a fresh version would be published after detailed consultations. It also stated that additional time is being provided to submit feedback on the same till October 15.
The draft of the proposed Bill was first placed in the public domain to seek feedback in November 2023. It had a self-regulation mechanism to keep a check on obscene and vulgar content, hefty penalties in case of violations and self-classification of programmes. However, a fresh version of the document was shared selectively with stakeholders a few weeks ago.
Vaishnaw added that in recent times, a new content-creator economy has emerged across the country and the government was encouraging the segment.
“Our intent is to encourage it; that is giving more opportunities to express, share and create new intellectual property,” the minister said.
The revised draft is reported to have proposed comprehensive regulations on independent news creators or influencers on social media platforms such as X, YouTube and Instagram, expanding its remit from Over-The-Top (OTT) content and digital news content.
The said draft was withdrawn after it was criticized for having far-reaching consequences for the press and creative freedom. DigiPub News India Foundation, an organisation representing more than 90 digital news publishers, earlier this month wrote to Vaishnaw requesting a conversation about the Bill.
However, the government sources, in the know of the matter, said that the intention behind the move to seek comments selectively was not wrong.
“A few copies were shared. It was done with good intent. It was like that a particular association has given us some inputs and has been asking repeatedly how my inputs fit in that structure. So we tried to put those inputs in the structure and showed them; asked what was right or wrong and, whether we should take it forward or not. But it would have been good if we had put them on a common platform for everybody to see. The intent was good but the impact was bad,” said sources.
The sources further stated that consultation being an extensive process may take time.
“Consultations for Telecom Bills took about two years and Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDB) Bills about two and a half years. The same process will be followed. There will be no voice that says that we haven’t been heard. The process for the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill may take time and we can come up with a totally new bill. And even after completion of the process, the government will see if it is required at all,” said sources.