LawSikho has created a telegram group for the exchange of legal knowledge, recommendations and various possibilities. You can click on this link and sign up: A few days after its release, the multi-star web series Tandav attracted attention for the wrong reasons. Streaming on Amazon Prime, the series starring Saif Ali Khan and Dimple Kapadia, resulted in two police complaints, a legal opinion and a complaint to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for allegedly insulting Hindu deities and hurting Hindu feelings. Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more amazing legal content. We accessed through RTI complaints from all over India to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in the Amazon Prime Show “Tandav”. This may have been a trigger for the regulation of OTT platforms under undemocratic and unconstitutional IT rules, 2021. We are examining today`s complaints against these new rules to show how they will constitute a rowdy veto and lead to censorship of otherwise legal speech. In UP, Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP was doing “Tandav (dance of destruction) on Tandav” because it wanted to divert attention from the peasant protests around Delhi. “Farmers are branded as terrorists and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is arresting them. What is all this? He asked.
The Mediation Rules, 2021, which straddle this timeline, have also been the subject of criticism and backlash when they have been notified and their constitutionality has in many cases been questioned and challenged by the courts. One of them appeared before the High Court of Kerala in the case of LiveLaw Media Private Limited and Others v. Union of India et al. (2021), where the court issued an injunction ordering that no enforcement action be taken against Live Law under Part III of the IT (Digital Media Processing) Rules 2021. He is an editor of legal reports and legal literature. Complaint against Tandav Web Series at Ghatkopar police station. Police promised a swift investigation, FIR according to § 295A of the IPC, Section 67A of the Information Technology Act and the Atrocities Act. Producer, director, screenwriter, actor and Amazon will soon be subpoenaed.#BanTandavNow #Boycottandav pic.twitter.com/Apg0hNYZgJ And curiously, the origins of these legal provisions in the CPI go back to the time when the British ruled us. Were the British sensitive and sensitive? Maybe. Ironically, however, they presided and, as many historians claim, fomented enmity between two major religious groups – Hindus and Muslims – and no one sued them under either of these two provisions! From a purely legal point of view, there is no wrong foot so far. There are, in fact, overly broad provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) – Sections 153A and 295A – that criminalize the promotion of enmity between different groups, as well as deliberate and malicious acts aimed at enraging religious beliefs. After the producers stopped their arrest due to the series of complaints across India, manufacturers, actors and other members sought protection.
However, the application for interim bail protection was rejected by the Apex court. Lawyers have been instructed to consider the issues raised in their petition before the competent high courts, particularly within the jurisdiction of the court hearing complaints against them. Beyond legal soundness, however, there is something erosive about all this development. BJP leader Kapil Mishra, who has been repeatedly denounced for community statements against Muslims, claimed the programme had “hidden a political vendetta” directed against the Centre and the UP government and insulted the legal Brotherhood. Mishra issued a legal notice to Amazon Prime Video, asking them to remove the show from its website and apologize to the public. We use the RTI Act 2005 as a tool to demand transparency and accountability from authorities on matters of public importance. The Tandav controversy and the resulting discussion about OTT content censorship is one of those issues that we believe is of public importance. Therefore, on February 8, 2021, we submitted an ITR request to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting asking them to tell us what complaints they have received against the series. The topic also gained prominence thereafter, as it essentially guided the regulation of OTT platforms through the Intermediary Rules, 2021.
The SC also has a solid legal basis to deny provisional protection to those who have turned to it, while ruling on other legal issues before it – for example, the bludgeoning of FIRs. The controversy has also led to calls for censorship and criminal sanctions for OTT platforms in India.