The Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), representing companies including Mukesh Ambani’s Network18, Gautam Adani’s NDTV, the Indian Express and Times Internet, argued the case on Tuesday before the top court.
“It is changing the whole concept of what is news,” Madhavi Goradia Divan, the DNPA’s lawyer, told judges. “Newsrooms will shut down, if we have to ask for permission … it’s then a complete regime of pre-censorship.”
The Supreme Court said it would hear the case next month.
The law requires journalists to obtain consent from people they write about, allows individuals to withdraw consent at any time and demand data erasure without a public-interest safeguard, and grants the government powers to block access to any information in the “interests of the general public”, according to the DNPA’s filing, cited by Reuters.
Media companies received assurances in an August meeting with the government that the law would protect press freedom, but the absence of a written exemption for journalists like those in the European Union, Singapore and Britain was alarming, the publishers said in an earlier filing.
A key concern is that requiring consent “would allow that subject to destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses”, the DNPA argued. From next year, the law will also let New Delhi order any organisation handling personal data “to furnish such information as it may call for”, putting newsrooms at risk of having to reveal sources.
The provision is “nakedly unguided” and could extend to “privileged communications in possession of a reporter or the informant”, the DNPA said, arguing it must be quashed. The group also warned that the law could deter whistleblowers from sharing information on corruption, corporate wrongdoing or electoral malpractice.