Lawfare

Madhya Pradesh government will send a proposal to the Central government seeking rights to take criminal action against web series for obscene and controversial content under the Information Technology Act, said a state home department official on Sunday. A decision to this effect was taken after BJP MLA from Mandsaur, Yashpal Singh Sisodia, raised the issue in the state legislative assembly during the budget session on Friday. A resolution to this effect was also passed by the state assembly.

Sisodia said, “obscene language and scenes are being published without any censorship. Now, parents are worried about youngsters as they are learning abusive language and criminal activities through web series and the contents of social media. We are happy that the Information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javdekar issued new guidelines for social media and OTT platforms but we want the state must have control over the content of web series.”

Earlier in MP, six FIRs have registered in the past four months against directors and producers of different web series. In November, the first FIR was registered against two executives of Netflix for hurting religious sentiments after the release of a web series ‘A Suitable Boy’. Later, five FIRs were registered in different cities against OTT Platform Amazon Prime for releasing web series called ‘Tandav’.