EXCLUSIVE | Centre looks to empower more ministries to block social media content

Although these five ministries are currently being discussed, the scope could also widen to allow regulators like the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to send takedown orders directly to tech companies. For a long time now, SEBI has been flagging the issue of incorrect financial information through financial influencers on the internet.

Currently, there are two parallel content blocking mechanisms in India. One is under Section 69 (A) of the IT Act, through which content that violates national security, or threatens India’s foreign policy, is taken down. Various ministries and state governments have nodal officers who gather such content and send it to officials at the IT Ministry, which is the final signing-off agency responsible for issuing the blocking order.

The other mechanism works under Section 79 (3)(b) of the IT Act, under which various ministries have been directly empowered to issue blocking orders to online platforms, most commonly through the Home Ministry-led Sahyog portal.

“We want to bring parity across both regimes. Like how using the Sahyog portal various agencies at the Central and state level can send blocking orders to social media companies, there is a growing feeling that the Section 69 (A) blocking process should also be similarly decentralised,” said a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The changes are being considered at a time when the government is pushing social media companies to take down content quickly. Last month, it brought about a change in law to reduce blocking timelines from 24-36 hours to 2-3 hours.

Users on social media have since also flagged that many of their posts which were satirical or critical of the government, and not necessarily illegal, have been impacted as companies ramp up their compliance infrastructure in the face of growing regulatory pressure.

Broadly, Section 69 (A) of the IT Act empowers the Central government to restrict public access to information in the interest of sovereignty, security, public order or preventing incitement to offences. The process is governed by the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.

Typically, a government agency sends a request to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which is examined by a committee before directions are issued to intermediaries such as social media platforms to block the specified content. In emergencies, interim blocking can be ordered before review. But in both these cases, it is the IT Ministry which currently sends the final blocking order to intermediaries like social media companies.

“What we are seeing increasingly happen due to the structure of the Section 69 (A) blocking process is a bottleneck at the IT Ministry. We are receiving many inputs from nodal officers at other agencies and we simply cannot act on them quick enough given the high volumes. So to free up the IT Ministry, it is being decided that various agencies be given the powers to block now independently, without needing the IT Ministry’s signature,” a second official said.

Queries sent to the IT Ministry by The Indian Express did not elicit a response.