Indian media groups decry Modi’s privacy law in court, say newsrooms face shutdown risk

By Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI, Oct 27 (Reuters) – The Indian government’s privacy law, which would require journalists to seek consent from people they write about, amounted to pre-censorship and could lead to newsrooms shutting down, media groups told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, starting the most high-profile challenge against the legislation.

The lawsuit comes amid accusations of declining press freedom in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi ​took office in 2014. Critics say many mainstream media outlets have not done enough to scrutinise Modi’s government, which has denied such allegations and says it respects press freedom.

A group of 21 news publishers, including companies owned by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, has challenged the privacy law, arguing it would trample upon investigative work and allow New Delhi to identify journalists’ sources, Reuters reported on Monday.

“It is changing the whole concept of what is news,” Madhavi Goradia Divan, the lawyer for Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) told the judges.

“Newsrooms will shut down, if we have to ask for permission…it’s then a complete regime of pre-censorship.”

The lawsuit is the most high-profile challenge to Modi’s privacy law. Until now, only free speech activists ⁠and a group of smaller news outlets had challenged it.

The Supreme Court posted the case for next month.

BIG MEDIA GROUPS VS MODI

Media companies received assurances in an August meeting with the government that the law would protect press freedom, but not having a written carve-out for journalists like in the European Union, Singapore and ​Britain was alarming, the news publishers said in a filing earlier this month.

The publishers are demanding that most of the law’s contentious provisions, which kick in from May 2027, should be quashed. They say the law could also force publishers to erase stories and give powers to government to demand information from publishers that could expose reporters’ sources.

DNPA, the group which has challenged Modi’s government, counts as members Ambani’s Network18, Adani’s NDTV and other marquee media groups including the Indian Express and Times Internet, which is part of the Times of India group, publisher of India’s largest-selling English-language daily.

Divan said during the hearing that earlier versions of the law excluded journalists, but the final one did not.

(Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Raju Gopalakrishnan)