Platform notifications often say only that access has been restricted in India following a request from the government or law enforcement agencies. There is no consolidated data available on how many such restriction requests have been complied with companies.
Affected users have been told little.
The remarks point to other routes by which such requests reach platforms, chief among them the Sahyog portal. The portal is run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Union home ministry, and it relays requests from government agencies and police to online intermediaries. Its critics have long argued that it allows officers across the government to order content removed without the checks that govern formal blocking. The government’s own submissions conceded at least one misuse. The high court agreed. Removal intimations can now be issued only by a joint secretary or equivalent officer at the Centre or in a state, by a director-level officer where no joint secretary post exists, or by a police officer of deputy inspector general (DIG) rank. A secretary-rank officer must review every intimation each month. That requirement answers a gap critics had flagged in the Sahyog process. Apparently, this is what the government means by ease of doing business.”
The court also ruled that users must receive a copy of a takedown intimation when it is sent to the platform, so that they can challenge the block. A month after that verdict, Meity amended Rule 3(1)(d) to address the criticism over who could send notices. In the last one month, SFLC’s RightsLine, pro bono digital rights helpline, has also received 28 cases of content restrictions. The IT Rules, 2021 and its advisories have Meta doing the job for it. In the past month alone, we have received 67 requests for pro bono help from Instagram users facing account and content restrictions. The largest share concern takedowns citing the IT Rules, 2021.
It admitted that an Indian Railways notice ordering X to remove a viral video of a woman driving on railway tracks in Telangana had exceeded the statutory powers, though Solicitor General Tushar Mehta called it an “isolated incident”. The Centre defended the portal as a “purely administrative” tool that “neither mandates removal nor imposes penalties”. It dismissed X’s petition in September 2025, calling the portal “an instrument of public good”, and X has appealed. Apar Gupta, founder of digital rights advocacy Internet Freedom Foundation, said: “MeitY has made censorship so efficient it no longer even needs to issue a specific order.
Those checks belong to Section 69A of the IT Act, the only provision under which Meity issues blocking directions. Because of the safeguards attached to it: orders must record reasons, the affected party must be given a hearing, and a review committee oversees the decisions, the Supreme Court upheld Section 69A in its 2015 Shreya Singhal judgment.
