Internet censorship in India is implemented through various legal, administrative and judicial mechanisms. Service providers use domain name system (DNS) filtering and deep packet inspection (DPI) techniques to ensure compliance with government policies regarding regulation and blocking of access to offending digital content at a large scale. Social media platforms are also expected to remove content based on take-down requests received through various governing agencies. Removal of content is also enacted at the request of content creators through court orders.
Freedom House'''s Freedom on the Net 2024 report gives India a status of "Partly Free" with a rating of 50 (on a 0–100 scale, where higher is better), having increased from 41 in 2017. Its Obstacles to Access rating was 14 (0-25 scale); Limits on Content, 19 (0-35 scale); and Violations of User Rights, 17 (0-40 scale). Out of 70 countries rated in the report, India was ranked thirty-seventh. Note that prior to 2019, Freedom House utilized a reversed scoring methodology (where a lower score indicated greater freedom). The Freedom on the Net 2017 report gave India the same status of "Partly Free" with a rating of 41 (scale from 0 to 100, lower is better). Its Obstacles to Access rating was 12 (0–25 scale); Limits on Content, 9 (0–35 scale); and Violations of User Rights, 20 (0–40 scale). Out of the 65 countries included in the report, India was ranked twenty-sixth.
Background
In 2003, the Government of India established the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) to ensure Internet security. The agency has since been responsible for accepting and reviewing requests to block access to specific websites. Prior to 2008, censorship of Internet content by the Indian government was relatively rare and sporadic, sometimes entering agreements with network such as in 2007, when Indian law enforcement entered an agreement with the then-popular social networking site Orkut to track down what it deemed defamatory content."Orkut's tell-all pact with cops", The Economic Times, 1 May 2007 In the face of heightened public sentiment in prioritizing response to security threats following Mumbai terror attacks, Information Technology Act, 2008 was passed, expanding censorship and monitoring capabilities."India Country Report", Freedom on the Net 2012, Freedom House. Retrieved 25 September 2012Internet Enemies , Reporters Without Borders (Paris), 12 March 2012 Although there was no sustained government policy or strategy to block access to Internet content on a large scale, measures for removing certain content from the web, sometimes for fear they could incite violence, had become more common. Pressure on private companies to remove information perceived to endanger public order or national security had increased since late 2009 with the implementation of the amended ITA. Companies were required to have designated employees to receive government blocking requests, and assigned up to seven years' imprisonment to private service providers—including ISPs, search engines, and cyber cafés—that did not comply with the government's blocking requests.
Internet users had sporadically faced prosecution for online postings, and private companies hosting the content were obliged by law to hand over user information to the authorities. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that bloggers and moderators could face libel suits and even criminal prosecution for comments posted on their websites. Prior judicial approval for communications interception was not required, and both central and state governments had the power to issue directives on interception, monitoring, and decryption. All licensed ISPs were obliged by law to sign an agreement allowing Indian government authorities to access user data.
Pre-screening of user generated content was also discussed but proper realization was not achieved.
The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) classified India as engaged in selective Internet censorship under guise of security in the political, conflict/security, social, and Internet tools areas in 2011, while noting that the attempts remained ineffective due to circumvention methods such as blocked content being migrated to other websites."ONI Country Profile: India" , Access Contested, Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain (Eds), OpenNet Initiative, MIT Press, November 2011, pp. 299–308Due to legal concerns the OpenNet Initiative does not check for filtering of child pornography and because their classifications focus on technical filtering, they do not include other types of censorship. The Freedom on the Net 2012 report stated that India's overall Internet Freedom Status was "Partly Free", unchanged from 2009. In March 2012, Reporters Without Borders added India to its list of "countries under surveillance".
Under the Narendra Modi administration, blocking requests rapidly increased from 6,000 requests annually in January 2018 to 12,600 in 2024. Takedown requests were sent through email or conveyed to social media representatives through a biweekly meeting informally termed as "69A meetings." The Washington Post reported in 2023, that internal sources claimed the meetings had become longer over the years, and sometimes spilling over into days. Following the creation of Sahyog portal by Ministry of Home Affairs in October 2024, to automate sending of takedown requests under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act (IT Act), 2000, the number of takedown requests nearly doubled again within a single year to 24,300 in 2025. Blocking orders have increasingly targeted criticisms or parodies of Modi or the Hindutva ideology of the ruling BJP with this resulting in accounts being withheld in some cases.
The administration is also establishing transformative legislative provisions granting the MEITy and the Ministry of Information Broadcasting (MIB) expanded powers to enforce censorship, citing reasons such as obscenity, protection of Indian values (concerning YouTube commentaries and over-the-top media (OTT) shows), the prevention of "anti-national online content" (such as content covering cross-border conflicts and separatism), and cybercrime prevention (fraud, impersonation, and synthetic abuse). There has also been instances of the government issuing blanket bans, with invocation of national security, potential to cause chaos, and hurt sentiments which have been criticized as disproportionate.
The adoption of IT Rules, 2021, is criticized for forcing takedown compliance of social media intermediaries with the threat of criminal prosecution of Indian resident enforcing officers, that are mandated by the rule, by removing safe harbor protections previously granted by section 79 of the IT act for social media intermediaries against content posted on their platform. Twitter was highly critical of the move and initially resisted compliance with the act but the company eventually complied with takedown notices and unsuccessfully sued the 2021 blocking orders against accounts linked to farmers' protest for not providing reason in blocking orders and targeting withholding of accounts against previously established norms. Digital and human rights advocates have also criticized the rule as a "regulatory contagion" of internet censorship mechanism, for inspiring similar legislature in Myanmar and Nigeria with nearly identical language.
Since February 2026, the takedown notice response period for online publishing platforms has been reduced from a 36-hour window that was followed previously, to just 3 hours (with an exception of 2 hours for posts regarding non-consensual nudity) which is the shortest content takedown timeline prescribed by any government. The grievance redressal period was also reduced from 14 days to 7 days. To comply with the three-hour takedown timeline, Meta, which receives majority of India's takedown requests, has integrated an API with Sahyog portal to automatically takedown content without a human review. Additionally although Meta discloses legal details of takedown requests to its users in majority cases, it excludes seven countries including India citing "legal obligations and regulatory considerations."
In March 2026, amidst reports of escalated takedown actions of withholding social media accounts, MEITy published draft IT second amendment rules expanding MIB oversight mechanism beyond publications and OTT platforms to "intermediaries and users who are not 'publishers' and post/share news and current affairs content online".
Censorship framework
In June 2000, the Indian Parliament enacted the Information Technology Act (ITA) to establish a legal framework for regulating Internet use and commerce, including digital signatures, security, and hacking. The Act criminalised the publishing of obscene information electronically and granted police powers to search any premises without a warrant and arrest individuals in violation. A 2008 amendment to the IT Act reinforced the government's power to block Internet sites and content, and criminalised sending messages deemed inflammatory or offensive."Internet Freedom", 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: India, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 8 April 2011 The enforcement of content blocking is carried out through IT rules that are updated and notified regularly such as in the years 2009, 2011 and 2021, with amendments to the IT rules, 2021 passed in 2022, 2023 and 2026. In addition, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) formed in 2016, issues executive advisories for compliance with the IT rules in the evolving digital landscape such as in 2023, regarding AI generated deepfakes and in 2024, regarding stricter compliance with the IT rules.
Information Technology Act, 2000
CERT-IN
In 2003, the Government of India established the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) to ensure Internet security,"Indian Computer Emergency Response Team", website, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India with a stated mission "to enhance the security of India's Communications and Information Infrastructure through proactive action and effective collaboration".CERT-IN "Charter and Mission", Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India CERT-IN is the agency that accepts and reviews requests to block access to specific websites. All licensed Indian ISPs must comply with its decisions, and there is no review or appeals process. Many institutions, including the Ministry of Home Affairs, courts, the intelligence services, the police and the National Human Rights Commission, may call on it for specialist expertise. By stretching the prohibition against publishing obscene content to include filtering of Web sites, CERT-IN was empowered to review complaints and act as sole authority for issuing blocking instructions to the DoT. Many have argued that giving CERT-IN this power through executive order violates constitutional jurisprudence holding that specific legislation must be passed before the government can encroach on individual rights.
In 2022, under national security grounds, new regulations were implemented by CERT-IN to require retention of customer data by VPN, web hosting services, and cloud service providers for five years. Most major VPN providers operating in India, announced that they would no longer use servers under Indian jurisdiction in order to preserve the privacy of their customers and also withdrew their infrastructure from the country.