MeitY set to notify portion of IT Rules for stricter compliances

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) may move to separately notify a proposed rule that would require intermediaries to comply with the ministry’s clarifications, advisories, directions, SOPs, codes of practice and guidelines, or risk legal action, a government official told HT.

Rule 3(4) was among three key amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, published by the ministry for public consultation on March 30. A fourth amendment was added to the proposal on April 21.

The official quoted above said that the move to separately notify the advisory requirement is aimed at ensuring compliance begins at the earliest. But a second reason was the pending discussions with the ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) on two other proposed amendments - expanding the powers of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) under Rule 14(2), and bringing user-generated content related to news and current affairs, including community notes on X, under MIB’s oversight through Rule 8(1).

According to two people aware of the matter, at least three meetings between MeitY and MIB had been scheduled since May, but were subsequently cancelled.

[PLEASE DROP A TEXT SO THAT WE CAN AT LEAST SAY WE REACHED OUT – IF WE HAVENT ALREADY]

Both the rules received significant pushback from the industry, arguing that intermediaries are already regulated under Section 79 of the IT Act and the amendments would create an additional layer of scrutiny by bringing them under an oversight mechanism originally designed for publishers.

Rule 3(4) forms part of the due-diligence obligations under Section 79 of the IT Act, meaning intermediaries could lose their safe-harbour protection if they fail to comply with government advisories.

Industry bodies representing major social media companies had called for the rule to be withdrawn and argued that this rule could turn government advisories into legally binding obligations tied to safe harbour, expanding intermediary liability and creating uncertainty for businesses.

The official quoted above added that MeitY does not want a repeat of the compliance issues it faced with X earlier this year over its AI chatbot Grok. On January 2, MeitY had issued a strongly worded letter to X, flagging what it called serious failures in preventing the generation of obscene and sexually explicit content through Grok.

MeitY also plans to introduce a schedule specifying which government advisories will be mandatory for intermediaries to comply with under Rule 3(4), HT reported on June 1.

The schedule will distinguish advisories that are binding from general advisories issued in response to specific issues.

The fourth amendment proposes continuous visible labelling of AI-generated content under Rule 3(3)(a)(ii), a provision that also faced pushback from the industry.