On September 17, 2026, the Delhi High Court (Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma) issued notice to Google and MeitY on a petition by Shaban Alam, a creator from Kanpur Dehat, Uttar Pradesh. He challenges a July 15 order of the Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) that declined to interfere with YouTube terminating his channel on July 1. The matter is listed for December 8. The Internet Freedom Foundation, which is representing him pro bono, says it may be one of the first substantive challenges to a GAC adjudication, per MediaNama.
The case is small on its facts and large in its consequences, because it tests whether India's appeal mechanism for platform decisions delivers reasoning or only a stamp.
The strongest case for the government
The GAC exists because internal platform appeals were opaque and users had nowhere to go short of litigation. The government has a fair argument that a quick, free, quasi-administrative forum beats a court queue. Its own figures say the committees received 1,065 cases from March 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 and disposed of 937, per the government statement carried by All India Radio. The GAC's own FAQ says an appeal lies to it against a decision of an intermediary's Grievance Officer, within 30 days of that decision (gac.gov.in). A user with a wrongful takedown has a route that does not require a lawyer.
That is a real improvement. It is also why the quality of the output matters.
What the petition says the GAC actually did
According to MediaNama's reading of the petition, Google's July 1 termination email cited "severe or repeated violations of our spam, deceptive practices and scams policy" but identified no video, upload, date, title, thumbnail or conduct. The channel ran from 2017, joined the YouTube Partner Program in December 2021, had over 267,000 subscribers, and had never received a Community Guidelines strike in nine years. Alam says Content ID flagged fragments of songs when he commented on a music programme, and that he followed YouTube's recommended fix of testing in unlisted mode and trimming claimed segments.
The GAC order, the petition alleges, said it found "no reason to interfere" and gave reasons copied verbatim from YouTube's policy page, without saying which of the listed behaviours applied to this channel. These are allegations in a petition. Google has not been heard on the merits and the court has decided nothing.
If they are accurate, the problem is not that the GAC sided with the platform. Platforms are often right. The problem is that an appeal body which restates the platform's generic policy language cannot tell a user, a court or the public whether the termination was justified. Alam also invokes Rule 4(8) of the IT Rules, which the petition says requires prior notice of grounds and a fair chance to dispute removal. I could not retrieve the rule text from MeitY's site, so that reading rests on the petition as reported.
Google's jurisdiction argument is narrower than it sounds
Google's counsel argued the matter is "a private contract between us" and that Google has a right to terminate. That may prove correct as a limit on what a writ court can order against a private company. But it sits awkwardly beside the existence of the GAC itself. The state has created a statutory appeal over these very decisions and made a state-appointed body their reviewer. Either the GAC's order is a public adjudication that must meet basic standards of reasoning, or the appeal is decorative. The petition also notes the termination email barred Alam from creating any other YouTube channel, which undercuts the suggestion that he can simply go elsewhere.
A pro-innovation reader should be cautious here. Courts ordering private platforms to restore accounts as a matter of constitutional right could erode the editorial and safety discretion that lets services police spam and scams. The narrower and safer question is whether the government's own appellate process met its own standard.
Speed is not the same as quality
The GAC rules push for resolution within 30 days, and disposal counts are the government's main metric. IFF has separately reported that the Delhi High Court on May 18, 2026 directed the GAC to decide another appeal within 30 days, and that the process has "significantly slowed down" since the IT Rules were amended in February 2026 (IFF). IFF recommends making GAC orders publicly accessible like court decisions and considering more committees based on workload. These are advocacy claims, but the proposals are cheap and consistent with the government's own stated purpose.
For a creator earning Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 a month from one channel, the petition says, an unexplained termination is a livelihood event, not a content dispute.
What proportionate reform looks like
- Reasoned orders. Require the GAC to identify the specific content or conduct it examined and the specific policy provision it applied.
- Platform disclosure. Termination notices should name the conduct at issue, so any appeal has something to test.
- Published decisions. Anonymised GAC orders would let creators, platforms and courts see whether outcomes are consistent.
- No new content mandates. None of this requires expanding takedown duties or rewriting platform policy.
The December 8 hearing may end on the threshold question of writ jurisdiction. Even so, the record will show what a GAC order in a contested case actually contains. If it is what the petition describes, the fix belongs with MeitY, not in a general expansion of state control over platform decisions.