'We're Criticised Of Interfering With Executive & Legislative Functions' : Supreme Court On Plea For OTT Regulation

A public interest litigation has been filed before the Supreme Court against OTT platforms Netflix, Amazon Prime, Altt Balaji (and others) assailing distribution of "obscene" content through their means.

The matter was listed today before a bench of Justices BR Gavai and AG Masih, which appeared disinclined to entertain it, being of the view that the issue lies in policy domain. "How can we...? It's in policy domain. It's for Union to frame regulations...as it is, we are criticized that we are interfering with the Executive functions, Legislative functions...", remarked Justice Gavai.

Be that as it may, when Advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain (for petitioners) contended that the issue is a serious one and he may be able to satisfy the Court, the bench asked him to serve a copy of the petition on the Union. "We will dismiss it on the next date after hearing", Justice Gavai smiled and said.

Notably, this is not the first time the top Court is dealing with a plea for OTT content regulation.

In April 2024, a bench of Justices Gavai and Sandeep Mehta came upon another PIL challenging the publication of inappropriate content on OTT platforms. This petition raised "the pinching question" as to "whether these OTT platforms should be allowed to publish content which is not appropriate for all ages without any restriction?" It was alleged that some movies on the OTT platforms involve pure nudism, yet anybody can watch the movies freely. After hearing the petitioner's counsel, Justice Gavai suggested that a representation be first made to the government. Accordingly, the petition was dismissed as withdrawn, with liberty to make a representation to the Union government, to be decided in accordance with law.

Subsequently, in October 2024, a bench of former CJI DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala, Manoj Misra dismissed another plea seeking constitution of a board for regulation of content/release of films on OTT platforms. In the said case, the petitioner's main contention was that there are no regulations for monitoring OTT content or release of films on said platforms. Observing that the matter fell in the domain of public policy, the bench expressed, "The problem now is that the kind of PILs that we are getting, we have no time to deal with the genuine PILs. We are only reading PILs of this nature. These are matter of policy- how to regulate the internet, how to regulate the OTT platforms - this is not something we can do under the exercise of the jurisdiction of our power."

Case Title: UDAY MAHURKAR AND ORS. Versus UNION OF INDIA AND ORS., W.P.(C) No. 313/2025