UP digital policy: Action against ‘anti-national’ posts, up to Rs 8 lakh for promoting govt schemes

The Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government has proposed a new digital media policy aimed at regulating “anti-national, indecent, or hurtful” content on social media. The draft policy also seeks to promote government schemes by offering payments of up to Rs 8 lakh per month to content creators.

The Digital Media Policy 2024, drafted by the state’s information department and yet to be approved by the state cabinet, empowers the state information director to initiate action against “any such content, video tweet, post, reel” that is “anti-national, anti-social, indecent or hurts the sentiments of various sections of the society” and if “the content is based on wrong facts or presents government schemes in a wrong manner or with wrong intention”.

It also allows the information director to stop the payments to content creators. They will be paid under four categories as per the number of subscribers and followers and purportedly on the “basis of views”.

Information Director Shishir Singh told media outlets on Wednesday that action against anti-national, anti-social, and derogatory posts “may range from lodging FIR under the relevant law, getting that post deleted, revoking empanelment, or discontinuing the advertisement.”

Under the policy, pages, channels, account holders, operators, digital media influencers, content writers or their related agencies functioning for more than two years will be empanelled with the information department that will issue the advertisements.

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