In October, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY)  had notified amendments to the Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2021 the place it mentioned that the federal government will appoint a number of grievance appellate committees (GACs). The committees are being shaped to supply customers an avenue to enchantment selections taken by the grievance officer of on-line intermediaries.

So far, the frequent understanding was that the government-appointed grievance appellate committees will solely take care of consumer complaints raised round problems with content material moderation and deplatforming. However, the remit of those committees may go far past that understanding. “There will be no restriction on the type of grievance appeals that the GAC can take up. It can be about a number of disputes between a consumer and an internet intermediary including issues like content moderation, deplatforming, and even data protection,” a senior authorities official mentioned.

“The government is working on the design of these committees currently in order to empower them to be able to deal with a varied range of user appeals. So far, the consensus is that there will be three such committees.”

Under the amended IT Rules, every GAC is slated to have a chairperson and two complete time members appointed by the Centre, considered one of which might be a authorities official and two “independent members”. GACs can search help from individuals who might have sufficient experience and expertise in a subject whereas coping with customers’ appeals.

The GACs will undertake an “online dispute resolution mechanism” the place the complete enchantment course of, from its submitting to the ultimate determination, might be performed on-line. Intermediaries reminiscent of social media firms and e-commerce platforms will even must compile each order handed by the GAC and report them on their respective web sites.

Any individual aggrieved by a choice of the grievance officer of a social media middleman might be allowed to file an enchantment to the GAC inside thirty days. The GAC is anticipated to take care of the enchantment and resolve it inside a month.

The appointment of such committees by the Centre has drawn the ire of civil society activists. Delhi-based digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation, in a submission to MeitY in July, had mentioned that the availability may “make the Central Government (rather than an independent judicial or a regulatory body) the arbiter of permissible speech on the internet. It would incentivise social media platforms to suppress any speech that may not be palatable to the government, public officials or those who can exert political pressure”.