The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)on 6th June 2022, has invited public feedback and inputs on the Draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Comments on the draft amendment may be shared at the following e-mail IDs – dhawal.gupta@meity.gov.in, notan.roy@meity.gov.in in either MS Word (or compatible format) or machine readable PDF format.
The Draft Amendment has proposed to create an appellate body called ‘Grievance Appellate Committee’ under rule 3(3) of the IT Rules 2021 having regard to additional guidelines as may be prescribed by the Central Government. Users will have the option to appeal against the grievance redressal process of the intermediaries before this new appellate body. The Committee will endeavor to address the user’s appeal within a period of 30 days. This is made necessary because currently there is no appellate mechanism provided by intermediaries nor is there any credible self-regulatory mechanism in place.
Further rule 3 which deals with Due diligence by an intermediary in which the following changes has been made:
An intermediary, including social media intermediary and significant social media intermediary, shall observe the following due diligence while discharging its duties, namely:
The intermediary shall prominently publish on its website, mobile based application or both, as the case may be, the rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement for access or usage of its computer resource by any person and ensure compliance of the same.
the intermediary shall inform the rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement of the intermediary to the user and shall cause the user of its computer resource not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right and it is harmful to child etc.
The intermediary shall take all reasonable measures to ensure accessibility of its services to users along with reasonable expectation of due diligence, privacy and transparency.
