MEDIANAMA **IT Rules and the future of online speech in India** **April 2026** ## **Genesis of this report:** On April 23, 2026, MediaNama held a panel discussion in Delhi on the recent draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026\. These amendments, proposed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on March 30, 2026, follow the February 2026 amendments that compressed the takedown window for unlawful content to three hours, and have far-reaching consequences for intermediaries, news publishers, journalists, and individual users, given their structural impact on safe harbour, online speech, and the ability of users to participate in public discourse. Our objective was to identify: * The constitutional and legal status of Rule 3(4) and its impact on safe harbour under Section 79\. * Practical effects of the compressed three-hour takedown window on platforms and on user speech. * Continuing relevance of Shreya Singhal v. Union of India * The shift from “actual knowledge” to continuous compliance expectations. * Structural problems with the IDC as a quasi-judicial body operating without procedural safeguards. * Implications of extending Part III blocking powers to user-generated news and current affairs content. * Operational challenges posed by compressed takedown timelines. * Risks of over-compliance and automated content removal. * The pattern of regulation through advisories, SOPs, and the Sahyog portal in lieu of legislative process. * Transparency standards under Section 79(3)(b) compared to Section 69A * Authorisation, scope, and accountability of takedown orders issued under Rule 3(1)(d). * The role of intermediaries between government compliance pressure and user free speech rights. This was an open discussion with participants from organisations including: This was an open discussion with participants from organisations including: Ministry of External Affairs Government of India, Amazon, Google, Bar council of Delhi, DeepStrat, The Hindu, Meta, IndiaMART, ThePrint, Newschecker, The Press Trust of India, Times of India, Central University of Gujarat, PRS Legislative Research, Data Security Council of India, TQH Consulting, The Quantum Hub, BBC Hindi, Software Freedom Law Center, India, Internet and Mobile Association of India, E-Gaming Federation MediaNama hosted this discussion with support from Meta, Amazon, and Google. Our community partners for this event are the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), and Digipub. **The following document captures and summarises the key points raised during the discussion. You can also watch the [recording of the discussion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xvT09YJYbs) on our YouTube channel.** # # # # # # # # **Executive Summary** The 2021 IT Rules brought digital news under government oversight. The October 2025 amendments formalised the Sahyog portal as a centralised takedown channel. The February 2026 amendments compressed compliance timelines to three hours, and the March 2026 draft widens the net from news platforms to ordinary social media users. Each layer has added speed and scale to executive control over speech while removing procedural safeguards. The common principle is speed without scrutiny. Collectively, the amendments to the IT Rules form a censorship infrastructure built incrementally over the past five years. The opening session described coordinated and escalating patterns of suppression by victims of censorship in India. This includes channel demonetisation timed to elections, India-specific account blocking without notice or explanation, takedowns initiated on the basis of thumbnails without officials watching the underlying content, fake copyright claims used to suspend accounts and damage algorithmic reach, and shadow banning. Molitics' Facebook page was blocked and Instagram account suspended without notice. 4-PM was the only Indian channel shut down alongside 16 Pakistani channels following the Pahalgam attack, with the government declaring it anti-national before the Supreme Court intervened and the order was withdrawn. Bolta Hindustan described more than 200 videos removed without explanation and demonetisation timed to elections. Lokhit India was summoned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s (MIB) Inter-Departmental Committee for a thumbnail that officials had not watched. Across all four accounts, the pattern was the same: no notice, no explanation, no recourse. Speakers across three sessions converged on a structural diagnosis. The March 2026 amendments do not, in any meaningful sense, "clarify" existing rules, as MeitY claimed. They are the newest layer in a stack that already runs deep. Rule 3(4) elevates Ministry-issued instruments, advisories and SOPs, that are by definition non-binding to the status of legally enforceable directions whose breach costs an intermediary its safe harbour. The IT Act draws its rule-making power from Section 87, which has its own procedural requirements; an advisory issued outside that framework cannot acquire binding force simply because Rule 3(4) says so. The Rule 8(1) and Rule 14(2) amendments extend Part III's blocking powers to user-generated news and current affairs content while removing the requirement of a prior complaint from the public. The cumulative effect is a regime in which executive action against speech can be initiated without a complainant, examined by a committee at the Ministry's referral, and enforced through blocking directions. The Ministry of Home Affairs has confirmed in an affidavit before the Gujarat High Court that 16,000 police stations have been enabled through the Sahyog portal to send takedown requests. At this scale, with a three-hour compliance window, no platform can assess the legality of each order. Platforms censor first. There is no accountability for unlawful or politically motivated orders, and no meaningful recourse for affected users. Speakers argued that Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) was decided to address a different problem, horizontal censorship by private parties, and that the doctrine has been overtaken by the central problem of today: direct government censorship of online speech. The government's own counsel in the Karnataka High Court's X Corp vs Union of India case has acknowledged that Shreya Singhal is out of date. If the government's appeal against the Bombay High Court order striking down the Fact-Check Unit succeeds at the Supreme Court, it could lead to the overturning of Shreya Singhal entirely. Through the discussion, several speakers suggested legal and proportionate measures for online speech regulation that do not erode the fundamental rights of people, as well as the procedural and institutional safeguards, including judicial oversight, parliamentary process, transparency, and proportionality, that the Constitution requires before speech can be restricted. The specific recommendations made by speakers are captured below. # # # # # # # # # **Key Recommendations:** 1. Withdraw the draft IT Rules 2026 in totality. Advisories must retain their original character. 2. Reject executive powers to block free speech without judicial oversight. 3. The Sahyog portal must be dismantled, since it creates an expansion of safe harbour and undoes the caution that amendments to Section 79 brought via the Shreya Singhal judgment. 4. Replace the uniform three-hour window with a graded takedown timeline based on the harmfulness of the content. 5. MeitY must develop and publish transparent Standard Operating Procedures for Section 79(3)(b) within a defined timeline. 6. MeitY and I4C must publish and regularly update a consolidated public list of all officers authorised to issue takedown notices. 7. Takedown notices must include evidence of unlawfulness, not just a URL. Affected users must be told where to seek redress. 8. Adopt a notice-and-putback model for content that is not extreme or imminently harmful, similar to Rule 75 of the Copyright Rules. 9. Withdraw the Rule 14(2) amendment. The IDC as currently proposed must not be constituted. 10. The IDC must be transparent, accountable, and open to legal representation. 11. Hold the line on Article 19(2). Reject expansion of speech restrictions through "public interest" or other extra-constitutional grounds. 12. Regulation of news and disinformation belongs to Parliament, not to the executive through rule-making. 13. Platforms and the government must publish Section 79(3)(b) transparency reports. 14. Political parties, press bodies, and civil society organisations must challenge blocking and takedown orders in court. Platforms must be held accountable to users, not just to government compliance pressure. # **Key Recommendations Explained:** ## **1\. Withdraw the draft IT Rules 2026 in totality. Advisories must retain their original character.:** The draft IT Rules 2026 must be withdrawn in totality. Rule 3(4) is not a clarification of existing law. It is an attempt to convert non-binding executive instruments, advisories, SOPs, and guidelines, into legally enforceable obligations whose breach costs an intermediary its safe harbour. This bypasses Parliament, exceeds the rule-making power under Section 87 of the IT Act, and gives MeitY the ability to make binding law on every digital business in India without legislative scrutiny. The 2024 AI advisory on pre-vetting of AI models was withdrawn within two weeks because it had no binding force and industry pushed back. Under Rule 3(4), that option disappears. The government would be able to issue binding directives on cloud service providers, e-commerce platforms, and every intermediary under the IT Act through an advisory, with no parliamentary debate and no judicial check. The ambiguity this creates is itself a censorship tool: when no one knows what the rules are, everyone self-censors to be safe. **Advisories and SOPs are not designed to make law in the way Rule 3(4) seeks to use them:** ***“An advisory is not fundamentally meant to make law like a rule is meant to make. An advisory is meant to tell you this is what we think about it. An SOP is meant to tell you this is the standard operating procedure that finds validity in law. When the non-consensual intimate images (NCII) became an SOP, it came from the Madras High Court, which has the power to make judgement law is also a valid law. But that is valid law. That came as an SOP. It was not translated in the IT Rules."*** ***— Rahil Chatterjee, Principal Associate, Ikigai Law*** **Rule 3(4) lets the executive bypass Parliament to impose binding obligations on every digital business, with safe harbour as the lever:** ***“The ambiguity in what you can say and what is protected or not protected is where that problem is arising." — Rahil Chatterjee, Principal Associate, Ikigai Law*** **Ambiguity over what speech is protected is itself the harm Rule 3(4) creates:** ***"The ability for the executive to bypass the legislature to make binding law impacts every digital business. Tomorrow, you're going to have an advisory saying, hypothetically, a cloud service provider must do XYZ. An e-commerce platform must do XYZ. It is linked to the safe harbour. That is the real fear in 3(4)."*** ***— Rahil Chatterjee, Principal Associate, Ikigai Law*** ## ## **2\. Reject executive powers to block free speech without judicial oversight:** The government can currently block any content on the internet by issuing an order to a platform, with no judicial oversight, no notice to the user, and no effective forum for redress. This is constitutionally indefensible. The state cannot arrest a person, take over a business, or seize property without due process. It cannot restrict speech with less protection than it affords to property. Every blocking order must require judicial oversight as a minimum condition. The current confidentiality framework under Section 69A, which prevents affected users from even knowing their content has been blocked, directly contradicts the Shreya Singhal judgment's requirement that notice be given to users where they are identifiable. A right to speech that cannot be challenged is not a right at all. Section 79(3)(b) makes this worse: as Torsha Sarkar, Project Manager at the Centre for Communication Governance NLU Delhi, argued at the discussion, Section 79 is an exemption provision, not a blocking power. The government should be routing takedown intimations through Section 69, with its procedural safeguards, not through a distributed network of police officers and bureaucrats operating through the Sahyog portal with no equivalent accountability. **Speech is being blocked with less due process than the state requires for arrest, business takeover, or property seizure:** ***“The government can, by notification, with no transparency, for almost any content on the internet, block your content, and you don't know why it's blocked, you don't know who to approach. If the government tried to do this in the physical world, if they tried to arrest you, there'd be judicial oversight, you'd have to be brought before a magistrate within 24 hours. If the government wanted to take over your business, there'd be a legal court order. But with respect to speech, we seem to have accepted that the government can just block speech like this."*** ***— Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** **Blocking orders are taking down entire businesses, not just stray posts:** ***“"As we've heard in the first panel, it's not individual random posts with three likes only. It's entire businesses that are being blocked effectively."*** ***— Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** **Takedowns should be routed through Section 69, with Section 79(3)(b) reserved only for non-compliance:** ***“When you think about government notification, the government should be actually routing their takedown intimations through Section 69\. If and only if that procedure is not followed, you have reached the intermediary, they have not responded, they have not taken it down, then the criminal liability that is set in Section 69A can apply to the intermediary." — Torsha Sarkar, Project Manager, Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi*** **Enforcement is politically driven and operates outside both the rules and court orders:** ***"None of this matters. MeitY will take down whatever is critical of the Prime Minister. Its process and enforcement is not tied to one single sentence in the IT Rules. It doesn't matter. I have seen it. It's not obeying court orders." — Apar Gupta, Founding Director, Internet Freedom Foundation*** ## ## **3\. The Sahyog portal must be dismantled, since it creates an expansion of safe harbour and undoes the caution that amendments to Section 79 brought via the Shreya Singhal judgment.** The Sahyog portal is a censorship channel built outside the statutory blocking process. It was created by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under existing provisions, without new legislation, without Parliamentary debate, and without public consultation. It operates parallel to Section 69A's formal blocking framework but without any of its procedural safeguards: no nodal officer review, no committee of joint secretaries, no Secretary-level approval, no meaningful accountability. The Ministry of Home Affairs has confirmed in an affidavit before the Gujarat High Court that 16,000 police stations have been enabled through the portal. At this scale, with a three-hour compliance window, no platform can assess the legality of each order. Platforms censor first and ask questions never. This is precisely the infrastructure for mass censorship that the cumulative amendments have been building: a system in which speed is the only principle and scrutiny has been designed out. X Corp is challenging the portal before the Karnataka High Court, arguing it operates outside the statutory blocking process. That challenge is well-founded. The Sahyog portal must be dismantled since it goes beyond the mandate of the Shreya Singhal judgment, and its lack of oversight, and expansive structure overwhelms platforms with takedown requests that it is impossible to ascertain the legality of. It undoes the concept of safe harbour. **Opacity in the Sahyog system enables censorship at scale with no accountability:** ***“"My whole point of view is that this opacity completely empowers people to censor speech without any restriction whatsoever and without any accountability whatsoever. That is expanding at a scale and a pace."*** ***— Nikhil Pahwa, Founder, MediaNama*** **There is no accountability mechanism for officers issuing illegal orders through the 16,000 enabled stations:** ***“Who's going to hold the person in one of the 16,000 police stations accountable for pursuing those orders, which is an illegal order, which is coming from a person who is representing the government?"*** ***— Nikhil Pahwa, Founder, MediaNama*** ## ## **4\. Replace the uniform three-hour window with a graded takedown timeline based on the harmfulness of the content.** The uniform three-hour takedown window is disproportionate, legally incoherent, and structurally designed to produce over-censorship. It treats a video of a mass shooting and a post that allegedly defames a politician as equivalent threats requiring identical response times. They are not. The original three-hour standard came from a voluntary code of ethics agreed to by platforms and the Election Commission in 2019 for a specific and narrow use case: campaign silence violations under Section 126 of the Representation of the People Act, where the determination is binary. Extending it to the entire universe of unlawful content under Indian law leaves platforms with no choice but to remove first. Three hours is not enough time to assess whether a post is defamatory. It is barely enough time to verify whether the officer sending the notice is authorised to do so. The result is automated, reflexive censorship at scale, with no application of mind and no protection for legitimate speech. This chilling effect, where platforms over-remove to avoid liability, is not a side effect of the three-hour window. It is its purpose. **Takedown timelines must be graded by the harmfulness of content, with transparency as the underlying safeguard:** ***“"There has to be some gradation. There could be really harmful content that needs to be taken down in three hours. There could be less harmful content which needs to be reported. But overall, I think there has to be one silver bullet when it comes to 79(3b) or 69A: it is transparency." — Snehashish Ghosh, Founder, TechNiti*** **A three-hour window is unworkable when platforms receive hundreds of orders simultaneously:** ***“Three hours works when you get one order at a time. Three hours doesn't work when you get hundreds of orders at a time. So that's impossible." — Nikhil Pahwa, Founder, MediaNama*** **Treating extreme content and defamation alike floods platforms with notices:** ***“With respect to the three hours: as soon as you start clubbing extreme content with defamation content, then you're in a situation where any police officer above a level of seniority can start issuing notices and platforms are swamped."*** ***— Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** **Three hours forces intermediaries to act without applying their mind to complex legal questions like defamation:** ***“In three hours, what you are asking an intermediary to do is not apply their mind. If there is something to claim that this is a defamatory post, should the intermediary be sitting in that position to decide, yes, this is defamation or not defamation?"*** ***— Rahil Chatterjee, Principal Associate, Ikigai Law*** **The IT Act framework neither lets intermediaries pause to assess nor protects users:** ***“The apparatus of the Information Technology Act does not incentivise intermediaries to pause and think and, in the absence of a stronger framework, does not favour users either."*** ***— Torsha Sarkar, Project Manager, Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi*** ## ## **5\. MeitY must develop and publish transparent Standard Operating Procedures for Section 79(3)(b) within a defined timeline.** Section 79(3)(b) has become the dominant operational route through which content is taken down in India, yet it operates without any standard operating procedures. Under Section 69A, MeitY developed and shared SOPs with platforms covering the criteria for blocking individual posts versus entire accounts or channels. No equivalent exists for Section 79(3)(b). This means decisions about whether to remove a single video or shut down an entire channel are being made without reference to any documented or publicly accountable criteria. This is not a minor procedural gap. It is an open invitation for arbitrary and disproportionate action. De-platforming an entire channel has a dramatically higher impact than removing a single post. Without criteria, it becomes a tool for silencing entire voices rather than addressing specific unlawful content. MeitY must develop and publish transparent SOPs for Section 79(3)(b) covering at minimum: when individual posts can be removed versus when de-platforming is justified; what evidence is required to support a notice; and what the process is for users to contest a takedown. **Section 79(3)(b) needs the same kind of transparent SOPs that Section 69A operated:** ***“"In Section 69A, we had very clear guidelines as to when to take down a particular post or when to de-platform. Something similar has to be here because they are not there in the rules. SOPs will remain much more flexible, but they have to be transparently known to the users as to what is the basis. Why is de-platforming done? Because the impact it creates is much, much higher. Removing a video, removing one post actually creates more problems than it solves."*** ***— Rakesh Maheshwari, Former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY*** **SOPs must clarify when the government should use Section 69 versus Section 79(3)(b):** ***“There has to be some level of standard operating procedures discussion to say what Section 69 has to be used by the government and where Section 79(3b) needs to be used. Not every piece of content needs to be taken down in three hours."*** ***— Snehashish Ghosh, Founder, TechNiti***. ## ## **6\. MeitY and I4C must publish and regularly update a consolidated public list of all officers authorised to issue takedown notices** Sixteen thousand police stations are enabled to send takedown requests through the Sahyog portal. There is no consolidated, publicly available register of which officers are authorised under which notification. This is not a transparency gap. It is a deliberate opacity that makes it impossible for platforms to verify the legality of a notice in three hours and impossible for users to hold anyone accountable. Historical notifications issued before 2025 have not been reviewed or made public. MeitY, as administrator of the IT Act, and I4C, as the aggregator and single point of conduit, must both publish and regularly update this list. Takedown notices must also carry a valid signature from the empowered officer. An unsigned electronic communication with significant legal consequences is not sufficient. **MeitY or I4C must publish a consolidated list of authorising notifications so platforms and users can verify legitimacy:** ***“MeitY is supposed to be the administrator of the IT Act. There should be a consolidated list of such notifications which should be made available. Or maybe because I4C is the aggregator and is the single point of conduit, that same list should be available there as well, so that at least people know whether you are authorised or not, by which notification, and whether the request is within the law or not." — Rakesh Maheshwari, Former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY*** **Takedown notices must carry the signature of the empowered officer issuing them:** ***“It's a serious communication of maybe unlawful thing which has been taken into cognisance. Should it not be signed by the person who has been so empowered?"*** ***— Rakesh Maheshwari, Former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY*** **Ministry of Home Affairs’ confirmation on affidavit that 16,000 police stations are now enabled to send takedown requests:** ***“The MHA came online, has gone on affidavit, and it is recorded in the order, that 16,000 police stations have been enabled through the Sahyog portal to send lawful takedown requests."*** ***— Rahil Chatterjee, Principal Associate, Ikigai Law*** ## ## **7\. Takedown notices must include evidence of unlawfulness, not just a URL. Affected users must be told where to seek redress.** A URL is not a notice. A valid and complete takedown notice must include the evidence on which the determination of unlawfulness was made, the specific statutory provision under which the officer is authorised to act, and the identity of the issuing authority. Without these elements, platforms have no basis on which to assess a notice in three hours, and users have no basis on which to challenge it. Users whose content is taken down must also be told which authority issued the notice and which grievance mechanism they can approach. The current system, in which content disappears with no explanation and no recourse, is incompatible with the constitutional right to free speech. **A URL alone is not a notice; SOPs must define the elements of a complete takedown notice:** ***“"Just simply sharing a URL saying that it is unlawful is not good enough. What is really required is some SOP which really talks of the elements of what makes it a complete and comprehensive notice to be acted upon." — Rakesh Maheshwari, Former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY*** **A URL alone is not a notice; SOPs must define the elements of a complete takedown notice:** ***“The person should get to know where this person now needs to approach in case he or she is aggrieved because of this decision."*** ***— Rakesh Maheshwari, Former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY*** ## **8\. Adopt a notice-and-putback model for content that is not extreme or imminently harmful, similar to Rule 75 of the Copyright Rules.** The current framework gives the government the power to take down content with no obligation to put it back if the order is wrong, excessive, or politically motivated. Rule 75 of the Copyright Rules, 2013, offers a better model: on receiving a notice, the intermediary takes the content down; if the complainant fails to obtain a court order within twenty-one days, the intermediary is free to put the content back up. This was substantially the model that civil society argued for during the Shreya Singhal litigation, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)-style takedown-and-putback approach, but the Court settled for the government order/court order standard instead. For content that is not extreme or imminently harmful, a notice-and-putback structure reintroduces meaningful accountability and gives platforms an incentive to assess the legality of a notice rather than reflexively comply. **Copyright Rules offers a sensible notice-and-putback model the IT Rules currently lack: :** ***“Rule 75 of the Copyright Rules actually has a fairly sane procedure for this. You send a notice, it gets taken down. If you can't get a court order within twenty-one days, the intermediary is free to put it back up. For content that's not extremely volatile, that's actually potentially quite a sensible approach to take. But you need some legal clarity on that issue, and currently the IT Rules don't provide it." — Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** ## ## **9\. Withdraw the Rule 14(2) amendment. The IDC as currently proposed must not be constituted.** The IDC as currently proposed is not a regulatory body. It is a censorship board. It combines the functions of complainant, investigator, adjudicator, and approving authority within a single executive body answerable to the MIB, with no external review, no requirement for a prior complaint, and no meaningful procedural safeguards. The draft amendment to Rule 14(2) makes this worse by allowing MIB to refer "matters" to the IDC without any prior complaint at all, removing even the minimal procedural threshold that previously anchored its jurisdiction. This is constitutionally incompatible with the separation of powers. It is also, as Alaqshendra Singh, Associate Partner at TMT Law Practice, noted, essentially a backdoor mechanism to bring in what the Broadcast Bill tried to introduce: direct government oversight of news and current affairs content, extended now to every ordinary user who posts about news online. The Rule 14(2) amendment must be withdrawn. The IDC as currently proposed must not be constituted. **The IDC fuses complainant, judge, and jury within the executive and now operates suo motu without complaints:** ***“The IDC itself is a problem because it is the executive acting as the jury, the judge, and the accused. Then on top of it, they have the power to, suo motu, without a complaint, take up matters. Everything is so general now. It's classic executive overreach to the point of impunity."*** ***— Jatin Gandhi, Vice-President, Press Club of India*** ## ## **10\. The IDC must be transparent, accountable, and open to legal representation.** IDC hearings are currently conducted in secret. They are not public, not transcribed, not streamed, and frequently do not even include the URL of the content under examination in writing. The committee does not engage with Article 19(2) grounds, does not give reasons for its decisions, and affected parties often do not know what they are defending against or on what basis. The IDC has repeatedly told courts it no longer wants to offer virtual hearings because people record them. This is an extraordinary position for a quasi-judicial body to take. It is a body that wants to exercise power without accountability. Requiring users to produce an Aadhaar card as a condition of being heard raises a further concern: the IDC process is being used, intentionally or otherwise, to de-anonymise users as a condition of accessing a hearing. IDC hearings must be public, transcribed, and streamed. Orders must be disclosed to affected users. Legal representation must be permitted without exception. **Users are placed in a hostage-like position where the price of regaining their account is Aadhaar disclosure and a forced undertaking:** ***“"First, the entire account gets blocked. It won't be unblocked until you appear before the committee. When you appear, you have to produce your Aadhaar card, which has been linked to your social media account. The committee will make you sign an undertaking. You're essentially in the position of a hostage: you just want your account back."*** ***— Apar Gupta, Founding Director, Internet Freedom Foundation*** **The IDC functions as a social media censor board, not a quasi-judicial body that engages with constitutional grounds:** ***“In my thinking, they are now the social media censor board rather than something like an IDC. They do not even tell you the URL in writing. They do not look at the Article 19(2) grounds. They do not give you reasoning. What are you appearing before? What are you defending? What is that procedure supposed to achieve?" — Nikhil Pahwa, Founder, MediaNama*** **The IDC’s refusal for virtual hearings to avoid being recorded, despite exercising a quasi-judicial role:** ***“They have repeatedly stated in courts that they no longer want to offer VC hearings because people record them, yet they are exercising a quasi-judicial role." — Apar Gupta, Founding Director, Internet Freedom Foundation*** **The IDC has ordered content removal based on a thumbnail alone, without watching the underlying video:** ***“I said, you can watch the video if you want. But they said, no, we have not even watched the video. And after seeing just one line of the thumbnail, they say the video should be removed." — Haseen Rehmani, Founder, Bolta Hindustan*** ## ## **11\. Hold the line on Article 19(2). Reject expansion of speech restrictions through "public interest" or other extra-constitutional grounds..** The grounds on which speech may be restricted under Article 19(2) are exhaustive and were deliberately limited by the framers of the Constitution. They do not include "public interest." They do not include "public infrastructure." They do not include any of the formulations that are now being imported into speech regulation through regulatory drift and judicial analogy to airwave-era reasoning that no longer applies to a privately-owned, unlimited-resource medium like the internet. Every expansion of Article 19(2) grounds is a permanent reduction in the constitutional protection available to all speech. It must be resisted at every instance. **Grounds outside Article 19(2), such as "public interest," are being imported into speech regulation through judicial drift:** ***“What is important is for us to understand that it's not about news, it is about speech. The extent to which speech can be regulated is Article 19(2). That is where the scope creep is happening. Limitations which are not a part of Article 19(2) are being included. For example, slowly we are seeing judgments coming up where public interest, which is not a part of Article 19(2), is being brought in because broadcasting is happening on airwaves."*** ***— Sneha Jain, Partner, Saikrishna and Associates*** ## ## **12. Regulation of news and disinformation belongs to Parliament, not to the executive through rule-making.** The IT Rules have been amended six to seven times since 2021\. No Member of Parliament (MP) has substantively voted on any of it. The government has effectively built a comprehensive regulatory regime for online speech through subordinate legislation, bypassing Parliament entirely. The problems this regulation purports to address, disinformation, hate speech, virality, are real. But the response must come through Parliamentary debate, public deliberation, and primary legislation, not through a constantly shifting body of executive instruments that no democratic process has authorised. The state is making rules faster than people can get them struck down in court. That is not governance. It is the construction of a censorship infrastructure through regulatory accumulation, each layer adding to the last, with no parliamentary mandate and no accountability. **Public and parliamentary debates should are non negotiable :** ***“The Parliament should come up with a law. The government should approach parliament. They should have a discussion. If we can have 16,000 police stations being empowered to issue takedown notices, we should be having these 16,000 discussions first in open society and a build-up to a law. There's a process. This process has been completely thrown to the winds. That's the problem here."*** ***— Jatin Gandhi, Vice-President, Press Club of India*** **The amendments are a backdoor for the regulatory regime the Broadcast Bill failed to introduce:** ***"This is essentially a backdoor mechanism to bring in what the Broadcast Bill tried to introduce."*** ***— Alaqshendra Singh, Associate Partner, TMT Law Practice*** ## **13\. Platforms and the government must publish Section 79(3)(b) transparency reports.** Section 79(3)(b) has no strict confidentiality requirement. Platforms are legally able to publish transparency reports on every notice they receive under this provision: who sent it, what content was targeted, what action was taken, and on what legal basis. There is no excuse not to. The current opacity serves only one interest – the government's ability to censor speech without public accountability. There is also a direct contradiction in the existing framework: the Shreya Singhal judgment required that notice be given to users in Section 69A proceedings, but the blocking rules imposed strict confidentiality. No such constraint exists in Section 79(3)(b). Platforms must start uploading these orders. If the government claims they cannot, that claim must be tested in court. Both platforms and the government must publish comprehensive transparency data on Section 79(3)(b) notices so that citizens can see the scale of censorship and what it is targeting. **Section 79(3)(b) has no strict confidentiality clause, leaving room for transparency that is not currently being used:** ***“One interesting piece which is lacking in Section 79(3)(b), and deliberately so, is that there is no strict confidentiality requirement. Therefore, there can be more transparency in terms of the nature and types of requests sent." — Snehashish Ghosh, Founder, TechNiti*** **There is an unresolved contradiction between Shreya Singhal's notice requirement and IT Rule 16's confidentiality clause:** ***"One thing Shreya Singhal did with 69A was to talk about how the notice needs to be given to the user. But at the same time, IT Rules 16 talks about strict confidentiality regarding the request from the company, but the communication as well as the action taken thereof. So it doesn't know what to do."*** ***— Snehashish Ghosh, Founder, TechNiti*** **Nothing in Section 79(3)(b) requires confidentiality, and publishing orders would expose the scale of censorship:** ***""What is it in the 79(3)(b) order that is confidential? There's nothing that allows it to be confidential. Why not put it out there? Then potentially we'll see the scale of the censorship and what the censorship is targeting."*** ***— Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** **Platforms should publish Section 79(3)(b) orders and force a judicial clarification if the government objects:** ***"The approach that I would have taken is just start uploading the orders. If the government tells you that you can't upload the orders under 79(3)(b), then you go to court and say, can we get a clarification that 69A has this confidentiality rule, but 79(3)(b) doesn't."*** ***— Vasudev Devadasan, Lawyer and Master of Laws Candidate, University of Melbourne*** ## ## **14\. Political parties, press bodies, and civil society organisations must challenge blocking and takedown orders in court. Platforms must be held accountable to users, not just to government compliance pressure.** The Congress Jharkhand X account was blocked under an emergency Section 69A order during the 2024 general elections. The country's principal opposition party created a new account and moved on. This is the signal that the entire ecosystem has internalised: there is no point challenging these orders. That signal is wrong and dangerous. Every unchallenged order normalises the next one. Every platform that complies without pushback expands the government's appetite for the next round of amendments. Political parties, press bodies, and civil society organisations must challenge blocking and takedown orders in court, use the Committee on Subordinate Legislation to put parliamentary pressure on rule-making, and make the costs of this censorship infrastructure visible. Platforms must be made accountable not just to government compliance pressure but to the users whose speech they are removing. **Political parties must show greater courage and legal literacy when challenging blocking and takedown orders:** ***“Honestly, political parties need to be a bit more courageous. Go to court and get proper lawyers, know your own law. If you're starting a thing like the Digital Azadi campaign, know whether it's an actual act or a proposed draft. Get your basics right." — Aditi Agarwal, Independent Journalist, Tech Trace*** **Civil society pushback has been too weak to force consultation, with rules notified outside their stated scope:** ***“"There is no civil society which is effective to push back. We've gotten our first secretary after two years. They notified the cellular amendments without a public consultation. They notified the SGI amendments which were beyond the scope of the individual consultation. They only did this consultation because there was some pushback, finally."*** ***— Apar Gupta, Founding Director, Internet Freedom Foundation*** ***“I echo what Apar said, that you need to have a strong civil society. “*** ***— Sneha Jain, Partner at Saikrishna & Associate.*** # **Reference Materials:** * MeitY’s recent amendments to the IT Rules \[[PDF](https://www.medianama.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IT-Rules-Draft-Amendment-March-2026.pdf)\] * **Our breakdown of the draft IT Rules:** What changes for intermediaries, users, takedowns, and news content. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/03/223-draft-it-rules-explained-news-post-social-media-fall-under-mibs-oversight-heres-what-means/)\] * **Closed-room consultations with no outcomes:** MeitY Draft IT Rules meeting leaves key questions from platforms, civil society unresolved \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-meity-draft-it-rules-stakeholder-meeting-key-questions-unresolved/)\] * **Pushback from press bodies:** Six journalist bodies demand unconditional withdrawal of draft amendments. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-press-bodies-draft-amendment-it-rules-free-speech-threat/)\] * **How did people react:** Compilation of citizen reactions on social media, op-eds, statements by civil society bodies, submissions, and more. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-public-opinion-draft-it-rules-amendments-free-speech-india/)\] * Digital rule, colonial echo – India’s IT Rules 2021 amendments by Rudraksh Lakra. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-it-rules-2021-amendments-free-speech-india/)\] * Digital structural authoritarianism – India’s IT Rules 2021 Draft Amendment by \[[Read](https://indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/guest-post-digital-structural-authoritarianism-indias-it-rules-2021-draft-amendment/)\] * Internet Freedom Foundation’s (IFF) submissions to MeitY. \[[Read](https://internetfreedom.in/iffs-comments-on-the-meitys-proposed-amendments-to-the-2021-it-rules/)\] **Tracking online censorship:** * MediaNama’s censorship tracker in March 2026 found over 40 instances of censorship. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-india-online-censorship-march-2026-tracker/)\] * Censorship tracker for Meta platforms in March. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/03/223-censorship-tracker-meta-facebook-accounts-news-outlets-satirist/)\] * Press Club of India (PCI) statement on recent social media takedowns. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-press-club-social-media-takedowns-arbitrary-flags-free-speech-violations/)\] * Multiple X posts were withheld in March 2026 after Section 69A blocking orders. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/03/223-x-users-report-posts-withheld-india-section-69a-no-reasons-given/)\] * Several X accounts were withheld in India following legal notices. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/03/223-section-69a-crackdown-multiple-x-accounts-withheld-india-response-legal-demands/)\] * Punjabi independent journalists allege a censorship framework by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) using takedowns, copyright strikes, and physical coercion. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-independent-journalists-punjab-allege-censorship-ruling-aap-copyright-strikes-it-act/)\] **Understanding censorship infrastructure:** * The Rise of infrastructure for digital censorship \[[Read](https://internetfreedom.in/the-rise-of-infrastructure-for-digital-censorship/)\] * The Building of a Censorship Infrastructure \[[Read](https://thewire.in/rights/full-text-the-building-of-a-censorship-infrastructure)\] * New digital rules risk diluting Supreme Court safeguards \[[Read](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/new-digital-rules-risk-diluting-supreme-court-safeguards/articleshow/130033462.cms)\] * Recent amendment of the IT rules reduces the content takedown timeline to 3 hours. \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/02/223-meity-amendments-it-rules-synthetic-media-deepfakes/)\] * Govt may cut content takedown timeline for social media from 2-3 hrs to 1 hr: report \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/03/223-govt-content-takedown-timeline-social-media-1-hr-report/)\] * MIB Proposes AI Tool for Real-Time News Analysis to Counter Misinformation \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2024/09/223-mib-ai-tool-real-time-news-tracking-countering-misinformation/)\] * Fact-Checking or Control? Maharashtra’s New Media Monitoring Plan Explained \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/03/223-maharashtras-new-media-monitoring-plan-explained/)\] * Days after Hate Speech Bill, Hyderabad Police orders social media monitoring AI tool \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/04/223-hate-speech-bill-hyderabad-police-social-media-monitoring-ai-tool/)\] * Telangana’s Push to Surveil ‘Habitual Social Media Offenders’ Raises Free Speech Concerns \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/09/223-telangana-habitual-social-media-offenders-free-speech-concerns/)\] * Explainer: Telangana Police Plan to Develop Surveillance Tools for Monitoring Private Messages and Online Content \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/10/223-telangana-police-cyber-tools-tender-privacy-concerns/)\] * Andhra social media crackdown: Over 1,300 arrested for ‘offensive posts’, DGP highlights AI-powered surveillance \[[Read](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/hyderabad/andhra-pradesh-social-media-arrests-police-10636751/)\] * Goa Police Ties Up with BITS to Create New ‘Radical Content Analyser’ tool \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/03/223-goa-police-ties-up-with-bits-to-create-new-radical-content-analyser-tool/)\] **Understanding Sahyog portal:** * Explained: What is the Sahyog Portal that X has called out for censorship? \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/04/223-explained-what-is-the-sahyog-portal-that-x-called-out-for-censorship/)\] * X vs Indian Government: Key Points From X’s Petition Against Sahyog Portal \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/03/223-x-vs-indian-government-key-points-x-petition-against-sahyog-portal/)\] * Zoom, Quora on the List of 94 Companies Onboarded on the Sahyog Portal, Reveals RTI \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/12/223-zoom-quora-list-companies-sahyog-portal-rti/)\] * RTI Reply Reveals Sahyog Portal Expanding Into E-Commerce, Raises FDI Compliance Concerns \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/09/223-rti-reply-sahyog-portal-e-commerce-fdi-compliance-concerns/)\] * Inside Sahyog’s Manual: Modi Government’s Online Censorship Method Revealed \[[Read](https://thewire.in/government/inside-sahyog-manual-modi-government-online-censorship-method)\] * X Can’t Use Safe Harbour Exemption To Refuse Sahyog Portal Onboarding, Delhi HC Observes \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/02/223-x-safe-harbour-exemption-sahyog-portal-delhi-hc/)\] * Kunal Kamra Challenges Sahyog Portal in Bombay HC, Calls It a ‘Parallel Blocking Regime’ \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2026/02/223-kunal-kamra-sahyog-portal-challenge/)\] **Rising concerns of free speech:** * Free Speech and X’s Lawsuit Against India’s Sahyog Portal \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/03/223-free-speech-and-xs-lawsuit-against-indias-sahyog-portal/)\] * Content Blocking Orders Not Following Free Speech Protections Upheld by Supreme Court: Experts at MarketsNama \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2023/05/223-free-speech-protections-shreya-singhal-judgment-not-followed/)\] * In Defence of Offence: On the Ranveer Allahbadia Controversy \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/02/223-in-defence-of-offence-on-the-ranveer-allahbadia-controversy/)\] * Who in the World Supports Free Speech? India Says Yes In Theory—But the Numbers Tell a Different Story \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/05/223-india-free-speech-survey-2025/)\] * Explained: Why Allahabad HC’s ‘Unsaid Words’ Ruling Threatens Online Free Speech Even in Private Chats \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/10/223-allahabad-hcs-unsaid-words-ruling-online-free-speech-private-chats/)\] * What Supreme Court’s Latest Hearings Mean for Online Free Speech: Satire, Podcasts, and More \[[Read](https://www.medianama.com/2025/07/223-sc-guidelines-satire-podcasts-free-speech/)\] --- [**MediaNama**](http://MediaNama.com) **is the premier source of information & analysis on Digital Policy in India.** We focus on key issues like privacy, data governance, fake news, misinformation, cybersecurity, cyber diplomacy, digital payments policy, Net Neutrality, intermediary liability, website blocking, internet shutdowns, data localisation, e-commerce policy, IoT, content regulation and censorship, among others. **Our mission is to help build a digital ecosystem which is open, fair, competitive, and global.** On MediaNama.com, our reportage attracts a readership of policy professionals, government officials, Members of Parliament, startup founders and business leaders, as well as investors with an eye on policy developments shaping the future of the Internet in India. 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