Govt revives registration of press and periodicals bill to regulate digital news media industry

Reviving its 2019 plan, the Centre is finally readying to place before the Cabinet the proposed bill for a new registration regime for newspapers that will also include India's growing digital news media industry which has so far stayed out of the governmental registration framework.

The proposed legislation - the Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill - will replace the colonial era Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, that currently regulates printing presses and newspapers printed in India.

The bill proposes to bring digital news portals on par with newspapers and will ask them to register the entity with the Press Registrar General, the equivalent of the prevalent Registrar of Newspapers in India. Currently, no such registration is done for digital news platforms.


In 2019, the Centre had put out a draft Registration of Press and Periodicals Bill that defined "news on digital media" as "news in digitised format that can be transmitted over the internet, computer or mobile networks and includes text, audio, video and graphics". The Centre's draft bill had sparked a debate then with many alleging that it was an attempt to 'control' digital news media.

While the Centre did not move further on the draft bill thereafter, ET gathers that all inter-ministerial and other stakeholder consultations have now been completed and the legislation is headed to Cabinet for approval so that it can be taken to Parliament at the earliest.

The bill will also remove the existing provisions relating to registration of books and matters connected thereto, freeing up the book publishing industry considerably. The draft proposes to 'decriminalise' and simplify registration requirements and regulations.