Social media platform X has sued the Union government in the Karnataka High Court for the SAHYOG portal, which it says is a “censorship portal”
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The story so far: Social media platform X has sued the Union government in the Karnataka High Court for the SAHYOG portal, which it says is a “censorship portal” that allows local police and different parts of the government to indiscriminately demand takedowns of online content.
What is the SAHYOG portal?
The SAHYOG portal was “developed to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries by the Appropriate Government or its agency under IT Act, 2000 to facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act,” the Centre says on the site. It is run by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) with help from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
The portal’s existence was disclosed by the MHA during a Delhi High Court case filed by the parent of a “missing” 19-year-old in Shabana versus Govt of NCT of Delhi and Ors. The court questioned the government and social media firms over delays in obtaining data from an Instagram account used by the teenager. The court had emphasised the need for a mechanism to enable real-time interactions between Internet intermediaries and law enforcement in order to address urgent cases.
The government, which was already testing the SAHYOG portal, and the MHA held a virtual conference with State police officials, informing them of the pilot. The portal is to be given over to the police across the country, MHA officials said at the meeting, and would soon be “expanded” to accommodate data requests from social media firms in such cases. The main mandate, however, remained content takedown notices under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000. X considers this illegal, as it argues only two laws govern internet takedowns in India.
What are the laws?
Section 79(1) of the IT Act gives online platforms a shield from legal liability for content posted by third parties, that is, their users. Section 79(3), however, qualifies this safe harbour by stating that the shield will not apply if “upon receiving actual knowledge, or on being notified by the appropriate Government or its agency that any information… controlled by the intermediary is being used to commit the unlawful act, the intermediary fails to expeditiously remove or disable access to that material on that resource without vitiating the evidence in any manner.” In other words, if social media companies are given notice by any “appropriate Government or its agency,” then they can also be taken to court for a piece of content, just like the user. This is incentive enough for social media firms to take down posts that have been flagged by authorities, without an explicit legal direction.
X argues — as have civil society groups — that this is an overreach. “Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act does not authorise the government to issue information blocking orders,” X said in its petition. “That power is governed by Section 69A of the IT Act read with the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.” This has been upheld by the Shreya Singhal judgment of the Supreme Court in 2015, a verdict that also held unconstitutional Section 66A, a broad law allowing prosecution over users posting “offensive” content.
Section 69A allows the government to block content, the IT Ministry says, if it impinges on “(i) interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, (ii) defence of India, (iii) security of the State, (iv) friendly relations with foreign States or (v) public order or (vi) for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offense relating to above.” However, this Section has several safeguards built into it, such as giving users the opportunity to be heard. These safeguards are laid out in the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009. However, even blockings under Section 69A have been contentious, because there have been instances where a notice has not been issued.
“While website blocking orders under Section 69A have poor procedural safeguards, they still have some of them,” the Internet Freedom Foundation noted in an analysis of X’s new lawsuit. “Now, even those basic thresholds have been bypassed by MeitY, which has transformed the safe harbour framework under Section 79 into a censorship system on large-scale.”
What is the government’s stance?
While these legal challenges are being worked out, the SAHYOG portal has seen participation from most social media firms, including those owned by Meta and Google. The government has argued that the “takedown” orders (as they are called even in the model notice the IT Ministry has shared with authorities) are not blocking orders. “Section 79 regime does not envisage any ‘blocking orders’ and merely issues notice informing intermediaries of their due diligence obligations,” the government said in a filing in the case. “In case of non-compliance of the notices, the result is lifting of safe harbour protection and consequent action under extant law… and the same is fundamentally at a different plane altogether.”
The potential for censorship even in such an indirect content governance regime, however, has elicited concerns. As Vasudev Devadasan, then with the Centre for Communications Governance at the National Law University, Delhi, wrote in 2022: “Unlike newspapers and broadcasters who are directly incentivised to protect their own content, social media companies have few incentives to defend their users’ content.”
Published – March 30, 2025 02:20 am IST
