The Supreme Court will on May 13 hear a petition challenging the blocking of the YouTube news channel ‘4PM’, which has a subscriber base of 73 lakh.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih is slated to take up the plea filed by Sanjay Sharma, editor of the digital news platform, according to the top court’s cause list. The court had earlier, on May 5, sought responses from the Centre and other parties involved.
The petition, filed through advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, contends that the blocking of ‘4PM’ was done on the basis of an undisclosed directive allegedly issued by the Centre, citing vague grounds of “national security” and “public order”.
Calling the action a “chilling assault on journalistic independence” and a violation of the public’s right to receive information, the plea argues that no blocking order or underlying complaint was ever provided to the petitioner. It alleges that this omission breaches both statutory and constitutional protections.
The plea further states, “‘National security’ and ‘public order’ are not talismanic invocations to insulate executive action from scrutiny.” It contends that blocking without notice and opportunity to be heard defies settled constitutional principles.
In addition to seeking the production of the government order and records that led to the channel’s blocking, the petition challenges the constitutional validity of certain provisions under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009. Specifically, it calls for the quashing of Rule 16, which mandates strict confidentiality of all blocking requests and actions, and seeks to strike down or read down Rule 9 to ensure notice and fair hearing to affected content creators before any final order is passed.
