On July 20, 2026, as thousands of students marched from Jantar Mantar toward Parliament demanding the education minister's resignation over the NEET-UG paper leak, mobile internet access in parts of Central Delhi went dark. Residents received a message stating simply that "as per government instructions," services had been suspended "until further notice." No suspension order was published. No authority claimed it. A day later, Meta geo-blocked an Instagram reel from Maktoob Hindi covering the protests, citing a legal requirement under India's IT Rules, 2021 — again without disclosing the underlying order (MediaNama).
The case for intervention
The government's implicit argument deserves to be stated fairly before it's contested. Large, unpermitted marches toward Parliament during a live security cordon create real crowd-control risk, and mobile networks can be used to coordinate breaches of barricades or spread inflammatory rumors in real time — the kind of scenario India's courts have accepted can justify narrow, time-bound restrictions. Platforms, for their part, are legally required to act on valid government orders within tight windows or risk losing intermediary safe-harbor protection under the IT Act. Neither the Delhi Police nor Meta invented these obligations; they operate inside a statutory architecture — Section 69A of the IT Act and the IT Rules, 2021 — that Parliament built and the Supreme Court has twice upheld in principle.
Where the process broke down
The problem is not that restrictions occurred; it's that neither followed the procedure India itself has written into law. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), the Supreme Court held that internet suspension orders must be published, must record reasons, and must satisfy a proportionality test — the state must show no less restrictive option existed (judgment, Supreme Court of India, 10 January 2020). The Telecommunications (Temporary Suspension of Services) Rules, 2024 — the Modi government's own follow-through on that ruling — go further: every suspension order must state the issuing authority, geographic area, affected services, and duration (capped at 15 days), and a review committee must convene within five days (SCC Online explainer).
None of that happened on July 20. The Internet Freedom Foundation said flatly that "no copy of any suspension order has been published" by the Home Ministry, the Department of Telecommunications, the Delhi government, or Delhi Police — and that an unpublished order "cannot be challenged in court" (The Wire). The Software Freedom Law Centre made the identical point, adding that the blackout disrupted hospital access and public transit coordination well beyond the protest footprint (SFLC.in). This is not a technicality. Publication is the only mechanism by which a citizen can know whether a restriction is even lawful, let alone challenge it — and the government's own 2024 rules exist precisely because the 2017 shutdown regime, decided behind closed doors, kept failing that test in court.
A pattern, not an incident
Delhi's blackout fits a well-documented national trend. India recorded 65 internet shutdowns in 2025 — second only to Myanmar's 95, and the highest total of any democracy in the Access Now-led #KeepItOn coalition's global tally (Access Now, 2026). Separately, content-blocking orders issued under Section 69A roughly doubled in a single year, from about 12,600 in 2024 to approximately 24,300 in 2025, with X and Meta platforms absorbing the large majority of takedown demands (Madhyamam). The Maktoob Hindi block is one data point in that surge, not an aberration.
The proportionate path already exists
The fix here doesn't require new legislation, a favorite reflex of India's Parliament — it requires enforcing the legislation already on the books. The 2024 Suspension Rules were themselves a concession that opaque shutdowns don't survive judicial scrutiny; publishing orders, stating reasons, and capping duration are minimum floors, not maximalist asks. The same logic applies to Section 69A takedowns: MeitY's own blocking-rules framework contemplates a designated officer and an examination committee, but neither Meta's notice to Maktoob Hindi nor any public disclosure names the order or its legal grounds. A platform told to comply "within a legal requirement" it cannot itself see is not exercising editorial judgment — it is executing an invisible command.
India's tech-policy ambitions — as a semiconductor hub, an AI-governance voice at the G20, a magnet for platform investment — depend on the credibility of its rule of law as much as its market size. A government that writes procedural safeguards into statute and then bypasses them the next time protesters gather near Parliament undercuts both the safeguards and its own claim to be a predictable regulator. Publish the order. State the duration. Let the review committee do its job. That is not a constraint on security policy; it is what security policy conducted lawfully looks like.