The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday ordered issue of notices to the Centre and the State governments and 70 media platforms on a petition filed by a lawyer and BJP member, seeking a direction to the authorities to take steps to safeguard the right to privacy of individuals and ensure that media outlets don’t invade the privacy of individuals by breaching law.
The court, in an interim order, directed that any broadcast in the media, governed by Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, should be strictly in conformity with the terms of “Programme Code” defined under this Act.
A Bench of Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar passed the interim order on the petition filed by Atma V. Hiremath.
The media platforms include newspapers, TV channels, online news portals, news agencies, social networking and micro-blogging service providers, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Citing instances of video clips purportedly showing Karnataka MLA Ramesh Jarkiholi getting intimate with an unidentified woman flooding the media, the petitioner claimed that “he feared that media platforms may, in fact, get hold of some of his private moments and may air them with total disregard to his right to privacy under Article 21”.
The petitioner cited media reports about claims made by social activist Dinesh Kallahalli that he had many CDs containing “explicit contents of other persons belonging to the BJP”.
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The petitioner sought a direction to the authorities to prohibit and restrain 70 media platforms from publishing, circulating, disseminating any content either visual or in any other form, which is in violation of right to privacy enshrined under Article 21, and in violation of the provisions of CTN (Regulation) Act.
“The petitioner apprehends that if the media platforms are not restrained... his right to live with dignity may get trampled,” the petition said.
Citing provisions of the CTN (Regulation) Act, the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, the petitioner alleged that media platforms had been on a daily basis showing certain visuals wherein a women was being represented in an indecent way.
The statutory authorities, the petitioner alleged, have miserably failed to take any action either to restrain media platforms from exhibiting indecent visuals containing women or prosecuting them under appropriate law.
“With private lives of the citizens being splattered over the media be it through social networking sites or spy cameras, protection is needed so that citizens can function in a way they want to and not think of others before their actions,” the petitioner said, while pointing out that what would be legal may be immoral, and what is moral to one may be immoral to the other.
