Draft IT Rules Feedback: Modi Govt Must Abandon Censorship Framework, Lock, Stock and Barrel

Earlier this year, the Narendra Modi government, via the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), notified some draft amendments to existing IT Rules, proposing some very significant changes to the already restrictive atmosphere in which journalists function in India. It proposes to bring under its ambit all commentators and individuals, not just journalistic organisations, and wants to act on social media posts, not just websites. It proposes that ‘advisories’ be treated as directions. It seeks to increase the duration for which intermediaries must store data. It wants to empower the inter-departmental committee (IDC), solely consisting of government bureaucrats, to pick up any matter, suo-motu, instead of just acting on complaints it receives, as previously.

Feedback was invited from news organisations, associations and the general public by May 7, 2026.

The Wire finds the draft changes even more restrictive than before, but in principle is opposed to the entire structure that has been devised of ‘IT Rules’, of eventually preparing a censorship mechanism with no judicial oversight, and of IDC being a government body authorised to issue takedown orders at will.

This is full text of the submission we made to the ministry.

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Submission: The Wire on draft changes proposed in IT Rules, 2021, dated March 30, 2026

The Wire is an independent multi-media digital portal on news, analysis and views in English, Hindi, Urdu and Telugu, and also on YouTube. We are a non-profit and have been publishing continuously since May 2015.

We wish to submit our views on the changes to rules proposed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on March 30, 2026 to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

We consider all the Rules to be violative of our rights to perform as a free and independent Press.

We recognise that the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, nor should it be. Hate speech and genuinely harmful falsehoods must be addressed and, where necessary, taken down. But cloaking broad powers in the language of combating “fake news,” misinformation or disinformation—whether generated by AI or by individuals—while in practice targeting independent views, forthright speech, criticism and even non-violent partisan expression, is disingenuous. Unfortunately, the takedown record of recent years points in precisely this direction.

We oppose the mechanism of this Internal Departmental Committee (IDC) which gives government control over journalism, effectively lays down a blueprint for censorship.

The promise of the digital world lies in extending, not eroding, the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of India. Conversations that would occur freely offline—in private settings, closed groups, or open public spaces such as tea shops, cafés, schoolyards, college festivals and public meetings—should not lose their protection simply because they have moved online. The shift in medium does not justify expanded surveillance or restrictions. Neither the government nor any other authority should curtail online freedoms that citizens would otherwise enjoy in the offline world.

We are concerned by the Ministry’s attempt to constrain the rights of non-journalist individuals. The freedoms we exercise as a free and independent press are not standalone privileges; they flow from the broader right to freedom of expression guaranteed to all Indians.

We fear these amendments point toward a wider curtailment of citizens’ rights, with journalists—and now “users”—serving merely as the entry point for broader restrictions on what may be said and what may not. If India is to arrest its slide towards the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index—most recently ranked at 157 out of 180 countries—not only these amendments, but this entire method of giving the government a mechanism to control journalistic expression must be abandoned.

Warm Regards,

Seema Chishti
Editor
The Wire

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