Censorship

These notices effectively act as content blocking orders and are sent under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. These fall outside Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, that has been commonly used to issue online censorship orders

While only the Centre can issue take down notices through Section 69(A), state governments and UTs, along with the Centre, are doing so through Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act.

UNDER THE Home Ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C)-led Sahyog portal, the government has issued 130 content notices to online platforms like Google, YouTube, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, among others, between October 2024 and April 8, 2025, as per data received by The Indian Express through a Right to Information (RTI) application.

These notices effectively act as content blocking orders and are sent under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. These fall outside Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, that has been commonly used to issue online censorship orders.

The number received through the RTI do not reflect the notices sent to Elon Musk-owned X under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act. Social media platform X is yet to join the Sahyog portal, which was launched last year to expedite the process of sending notices. X has, in fact, sued the government over this, calling it a “censorship” portal.

A separate RTI application filed by this paper also showed that in just two months January-February 2025, the IT Ministry had issued 785 blocking orders to various online intermediaries through the use of Section 69(A) of the IT Act.