On the morning of 2 October 2026, Jio subscribers around Connaught Place in central New Delhi received a message: "As per government instructions Internet services have been stopped in your area till further notice." It arrived at 9:40am, about ninety minutes before a planned protest at Jantar Mantar calling for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign. The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said it could find no published suspension order from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Department of Telecommunications, the Delhi government or Delhi Police. The Wire reported IFF's complaint that "the public does not know who directed this shutdown, on what grounds, over what area, or until when."
One caveat first: absence of a published order is not proof that no order exists. An order may have been issued and simply not made public. But the rules treat publication as part of the order's validity, so the distinction matters less than it sounds.
The strongest case for acting
The case for the authorities is not frivolous. Delhi Police had denied permission for the Jantar Mantar gathering, Section 163 prohibitory orders were in force across the New Delhi district, and eleven metro stations had closed entry and exit points, according to IFF's account. Crowd management in a dense commercial district is hard. Mobile data can speed up mobilisation, and officials may fear that rumours or live-streamed confrontations escalate. Preventing a public-order incident is a legitimate goal, and the Telecommunications Act, 2023 lists public order and preventing incitement to an offence among the grounds for suspension under section 20(2).
But a legitimate goal does not settle the question. The question is whether the means were lawful and proportionate, and whether the state can show it.
What the 2024 rules actually require
The Telecommunications (Temporary Suspension of Services) Rules, 2024, notified on 22 November 2024 as G.S.R. 724(E), set out a specific sequence:
- Who: Only the Union Home Secretary, or a state's Home Department secretary, may issue a suspension order. In unavoidable circumstances an officer not below Joint Secretary rank may issue it, but it lapses unless confirmed within 24 hours (rule 3(1)).
- Publication and reasons: The order "shall be published" and must clearly state its reasons (rule 3(2)).
- Scope: It must be limited to the specific reasons for the order, a clearly defined geographic area and type of service, and a specified duration of no more than fifteen days (rule 3(2)).
- Necessity: No order may issue unless the authority has concluded that the objective cannot be achieved by other reasonable means (rule 3(4)).
- Review: A copy goes to the review committee within 24 hours, and the committee must meet within five days of issuance to decide whether the order complies with section 20 (rules 3(3) and 5(3)).
Set against this, a message saying "till further notice" fails on its face. The rules require a specified duration of at most fifteen days, and an open-ended suspension has no end date. This also echoes the Supreme Court's January 2020 judgment in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India. As summarised by Columbia's Global Freedom of Expression project, the Court held that orders restricting fundamental rights must be public, that proportionality applies, and that indefinite suspensions are impermissible.
The costs fell on people who were not protesting
Traders reported UPI payments failing and sales falling by half. The Tribune described businesses reverting to cash, cafes accepting only cash, and visitors unable to book rides. We cannot verify the sales figure independently, and the Tribune report does not quantify it. The direction of the harm is not in doubt, though.
UPI now carries roughly 802 million transactions a day, according to NPCI data for September 2026. A mobile-data cut in a commercial district removes the primary payment rail for ordinary shops. A blunt area-wide suspension hits tea sellers and cafe owners while doing little to stop a determined organiser, who can use Wi-Fi, SMS or word of mouth. That is a failure of the "least restrictive means" test, which the rules encode in rule 3(4).
The accountability gap is structural
India is not new to this. Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition counted 84 shutdowns across 16 states and territories in 2024, the most of any democracy. IFF warned during the 2024 consultation that the rules did not prescribe how orders must be published, that the review committee is drawn from the same executive branch that issues orders and does not hear affected parties, and that its decisions need not be published. Those criticisms read as predictions. If a shutdown can occur with no findable order, the transparency rule depends on goodwill.
What proportionate policy looks like
We do not argue that governments can never restrict connectivity. We argue that restrictions should be the exception, lawfully issued and visible. Three steps would make the 2024 rules work as written:
- Publish at a fixed place. Orders should appear on a single government portal within hours, with the issuing authority, area, service type, and end time. Without that, no one can tell a lawful order from an informal instruction to operators.
- Publish review outcomes. The committee's five-day determination should be public, including orders it finds non-compliant.
- Offer proportionate alternatives. Targeted crowd management, rate limits on specific platforms, or narrower geographic cuts do less collateral damage than switching off mobile data around a payments-heavy market.
If an order exists for 2 October, publishing it now costs the government little and would answer IFF's questions. If none exists, then operators acted on an instruction that the 2024 rules do not recognise, and the committee should say so. Either answer is better than silence. A rule that requires publication, reasons and a time limit is only worth the paper if it is enforced the first time it is tested in the capital.