E-Paper
In spotlight after HC ruling: The secrecy around orders from government to take down social media posts
The rules do not require users to be informed of takedown orders, but the HC held that notifying affected users is essential to natural justice.
Prefer HTon Google
When the government wants a social media post, page or account inaccessible in India, the order goes to the platform, not to the person who posted it. The user usually finds out only when the content disappears or the platform sends an automated message, and often never sees the order itself.
On October 5, 2026, the Punjab and Haryana High Court said this cannot continue under one of the two main takedown routes. A copy of the order must go to the user at the same time it goes to the platform.
The government has two main legal ways to get content removed, and they come with very different levels of transparency. The first is blocking under Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act. It lets the Centre direct an intermediary to block public access to information in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states or public order, or to prevent incitement to a cognisable offence related to these. Orders issued under it are confidential in nature. The procedure is laid down in the IT (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.
The second route is a notice under Section 79(3)(b) of the Act, read with Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Section 79 protects platforms from liability for what their users post, but that protection is lost if the platform is notified by the government that content is being used for an unlawful act and does not remove it quickly. Rule 3(1)(d) turns this into a deadline. It was originally 36 hours, but amendments notified in February 2026 cut it to three hours. Many of these notices are routed through the Sahyog portal run by the Home Ministry’s cyber crime coordination centre.
The 2009 blocking rules do give some role to the affected party. Rule 8 says the government’s Designated Officer should identify the person or platform hosting the content and issue a notice asking them to appear before the examining committee. Rule 9 allows an emergency interim direction without that hearing, with the matter to go to the committee within 48 hours. But Rule 16 requires all blocking requests and actions to be kept strictly confidential, so the order is rarely seen even by those most affected by it.
Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 Rules has no such hearing provision at all. Nothing in it requires the government to tell the user whose content is affected, or to make the order public.
Also read: Australia to sue Facebook, TikTok over violations of under-16 social media ban
The Punjab and Haryana High Court ruling
In Haryana 24 News Network Private Limited v Union of India and Others, decided on October 5, 2026, Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya set aside the blocking of a news company’s Facebook page, which the Superintendent of Police, Yamuna Nagar, had ordered. The page had been blocked in India since August 21, 2026.
The Superintendent of Police sent an intimation to Meta on August 21 asking it to disable the page. The company said it was never told. Its directors learned of the block only from a notice on the page itself, in which Meta said access had been restricted in India after a notice from the Government of India or law enforcement under Section 79(3)(b), and told the user to “reach out to The Government of India/Law Enforcement” for details. The company said neither the police nor Meta ever gave it a copy of the intimation.
The court found the intimation invalid on two grounds. First, the rules say that where the police issue such an intimation, the officer must be of the rank of Deputy Inspector General of Police or above and specially authorised by the government. A Superintendent of Police is below that rank. The state argued the power had been delegated to him, but the court said it could not point to any rule allowing that, and called the officer’s action an arbitrary exercise of power.
Second, the court noted that nothing showed the mandatory monthly review of such intimations had been carried out, even though more than a month had passed. It held that the intimation was without jurisdiction, so Meta was not required to act on it.
The state argued that the company should first have gone to Meta’s grievance officer under Rule 3(2) of the IT Rules. The court refused to send it there. It said that a hearing before the grievance officer is meaningless if the user does not know what the intimation says or what material it relied on. The rule does not expressly require the government to tell the user, but the court held this is an essential part of natural justice and has to be read into the rule.
The court ordered Meta to restore the page. It added that if the authorities find anything illegal on the page in future, they must give the company a copy of any new intimation immediately after sending it to the platform.
The October 2025 amendment on who can send a notice
The ruling builds on a change the government itself made a year earlier. In October 2025, MeitY amended the IT Rules to bring in senior-level authorisation for takedown notices under Rule 3(1)(d). Such notices can now be issued only by an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary or equivalent, or a Director-level officer where no Joint Secretary has been appointed, in the Central or a State Government.
Police can issue them only through a specially authorised officer of Deputy Inspector General rank or above. Lower-ranking officers can no longer send direct blocking orders. The notice must also be a reasoned one in writing, stating the legal provision invoked, the nature of the unlawful act and the specific URL to be removed, and all such notices are to be reviewed every month by an officer of at least Secretary rank. The High Court’s judgment quotes this amended text in full.
The change came after a long dispute over who could send such notices. In July 2025, X Corp’s counsel told the Karnataka High Court it would be dangerous if “every Tom, Dick and Harry officer” could send takedown notices, a remark the government objected to. In September 2025, the High Court dismissed X’s petition and upheld the government’s power to issue the notices, and X said it would appeal. The amendment followed about a month later.
What the amendment did not do was require the government to tell the affected user. That is the gap the Punjab and Haryana High Court has now filled, at least within its jurisdiction.
Also read: ‘How can 12-13 year-olds have social media accounts?’: Supreme Court orders Centre to remedy law for minors
Section 69A and the secrecy of orders
Rule 16 of the blocking rules treats directions under section 69A as confidential. The Telegram block this June is one of the rare cases where such orders came to light.
MeitY, acting on the recommendation of the National Testing Agency, issued orders under Section 69A, blocking Telegram across India to disrupt organised fraud ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination on June 21. The order also directed Telegram to disable its message-editing feature until June 30, to prevent the fabrication of paper-leak evidence.
The orders became known largely because Telegram challenged them in the Delhi High Court, which dismissed its petition on June 19, finding the government had followed the procedure and the step was proportionate given the emergency. Digital rights groups argued that such orders should be published so they can be tested in court, citing the Supreme Court’s 2020 judgment in Anuradha Bhasin v Union of India.
