The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday denied The Hindu’s report on weak enforcement of anti-tobacco warnings for TV reveals and movies streamed on-line.

“A reputed news publication has recently made a claim that the Union Government has reached ‘an uneasy compromise’ with OTT (over-the-top) streaming services on adding smoking warnings to their content,” the Ministry mentioned in a press release. “The report further claims that some platforms have chosen less intrusive warnings as a result of such an agreement. The news report is misinformed and [its] claims are false, misleading and based on misrepresented facts.”

The report was based mostly on interviews with an business participant at a current assembly between the federal government and streaming corporations, official minutes of the assembly supplied to The Hindu by the Health Ministry, and a evaluation of content material throughout streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, together with collection and movies that have been launched after September 1, when the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Amendment Rules, 2023, got here into power.

The Rules require streaming platforms to have two video warnings in opposition to tobacco consumption for every movie or TV episode that options smoking scenes, and an onscreen textual warning on every shot the place tobacco consumption is depicted. While the Rules have been in power for over six weeks, streaming platforms haven’t enforced it in letter and spirit, The Hindu had discovered. 

On August 28, business and authorities representatives met, and the Secretary for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting “emphasised the need to have a more pragmatic approach, rather than applying the provisions applicable to films and TV on OTT platforms which are a different form of media”, as a concluding be aware to the assembly, in keeping with the minutes supplied to The Hindu by the federal government.

The Health Ministry now says that it’ll not dilute the Rules, whose necessities haven’t been placed on maintain formally. “There is no compromise with the rules and action will be initiated by the government for any non-compliance with the OTT Rules 2023,” the Health Ministry mentioned.