Platform notifications often say only that access has been restricted in India following a request from the government or law enforcement agencies. There is no consolidated data available on how many such restriction requests have been complied with companies.
Affected users have been told little.
The remarks point to other routes by which such requests reach platforms, chief among them the Sahyog portal. The portal is run by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Union home ministry, and it relays requests from government agencies and police to online intermediaries. Its critics have long argued that it allows officers across the government to order content removed without the checks that govern formal blocking. Removal intimations can now be issued only by a joint secretary or equivalent officer at the Centre or in a state, by a director-level officer where no joint secretary post exists, or by a police officer of deputy inspector general (DIG) rank. A secretary-rank officer must review every intimation each month. That requirement answers a gap critics had flagged in the Sahyog process.
A month after that verdict, Meity amended Rule 3(1)(d) to address the criticism over who could send notices. The court also ruled that users must receive a copy of a takedown intimation when it is sent to the platform, so that they can challenge the block.
Those checks belong to Section 69A of the IT Act, the only provision under which Meity issues blocking directions. The high court agreed. Because of the safeguards attached to it: orders must record reasons, the affected party must be given a hearing, and a review committee oversees the decisions, the Supreme Court upheld Section 69A in its 2015 Shreya Singhal judgment.
The Centre defended the portal as a “purely administrative” tool that “neither mandates removal nor imposes penalties”. It dismissed X’s petition in September 2025, calling the portal “an instrument of public good”, and X has appealed.
