Hours after its public announcement, an official draft containing changes to India’s technology and social media regulations, including the creation of one or more grievance appellate committees, was withdrawn.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology explained uploading the said revised set of rules ‘later’ and that the ‘June 1’ dated draft required some changes after it was taken down.

MeitY noted that such oversight would provide an alternative to users who do not agree with the decisions made by in-house resident grievance officers within any social media or internet intermediary, while mooting the establishment of one or more grievance appellate committees to evaluate complaints from aggrieved social media users.

Instead, it proposed that social media users can seek an alternative redressal mechanism and that users also have the right to seek judicial remedy at any time.

Then, the grievance appellate committees are suggested to decide on user appeals within 30 days and each order passed by the committee must be complied with by the platform.

However, industry experts view that such a timeline could be helpful in case the content contains sensitive nature such as sexual abuse or child abuse, they expressed that the timelines should be relaxed for other complaints and infringements.

“For harms like defamation and IPR (intellectual property right) infringement, such short durations may lead to more challenges than it seeks to resolve and only courts would be in a position to determine whether such content violates defamation laws or infringes upon IPR,” says Kazim Rizvi, founder, The Dialogue.

Rizvi also indicated that the intermediaries should respect the constitutional rights of the users, including the free speech rule per Rule 3(1)(n). On the other hand, they should also redress and dispose-off user complaints entailing issues such as defamation within 15 days.

Moreover, industry experts also noted that the now aborted move had missed out addressing critical concerns, as well as, a review of traceability provision that including mandating the use of automated tools to review the content on the platform.

“We appreciate the amendment but the clause is vague and doesn’t clarify whether it proposes that fundamental rights can now be judicially enforced against platforms,” Apar Gupta of Internet Freedom Foundation adds.