The Union government is planning to allow the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) to send takedown notices to individual users for their social media posts. Under the IT Rules, 2021, the Ministry could issue such notices only to online news platforms.
In addition, any advisories to social media platforms by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) would, if not complied with, affect the firms’ so-called “safe harbour”, allowing them to be held liable in court for users’ content.
Officers issuing content notice to be made more ‘accountable’
These changes have been put forth in a draft amendment on Monday (March 30, 2026) to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which were amended as recently as February. The IT Ministry said in an explanatory memorandum to Monday’s proposed amendment that the addition of individual user posts to the I&B Ministry was a “clarification of applicability” of those rules to “news and current affairs content hosted by non-publisher users”.
In a statement, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) decried the proposal as a “massive expansion of unconstitutional censorship and regulatory power”.
