Broadcasting Bill still in drafting stage: MIB tells RS

New Delhi: The minister of information and broadcasting, Ashwini Vaishnaw, informed the Rajya Sabha on Friday that the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, was still in the drafting stage in a written response to a question raised by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Jawhar Sircar.

In the response, he said that the Bill “was placed in the public domain for feedback and comments of the stakeholders, including domain experts and the general public.”

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Sircar had asked for the government’s response to the concerns related to the Bill raised by the Editors Guild of India, the National Alliance of Journalists.

He had also asked the government’s plan “to avoid overlap of jurisdiction in view of Acts and Rules Amendments under the IT [Information Technology] Act on data, private communications, and public expressions on TV, films, OTT, YouTube platforms, social media, as well as digital journalism.” Neither were answered.

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To be sure, the first draft of the broadcasting bill was placed in public domain for public consultation on November 10. However, the second draft, shared with stakeholders earlier this week and reported on by HT on July 26, has not been placed in the public domain. Stakeholders were instructed to collect their individual copies of the second draft from Shastri Bhawan and give an undertaking that they would not share the Bill further.

Each copy given to stakeholders is unique, as it bears a watermark across each page that is unique to the stakeholder so that the MIB can trace leaks.