A Blackout Without a Paper Trail
On July 20, 2026, thousands of protesters from the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party marched on Parliament as the monsoon session opened, demanding education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation over the May NEET paper leak that forced roughly two million students to retake the exam, the release of hunger-striking activist Sonam Wangchuk, and compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after the leak (The National). Police used tear gas and, protesters say, lathi charges to disperse the crowd near Parliament; Delhi Police denies using force.
Somewhere in that timeline, mobile internet went dark across parts of Central Delhi, including the Jantar Mantar protest site. MediaNama's reporter on the ground confirmed the disruption was active by 10:30 am, with journalist Aroon Deep reduced to filing updates over a nearby Jio Wi-Fi hotspot (MediaNama). Some users received a text message reading: "As per government instructions, internet services had been stopped in the area until further notice." No agency was named.
The Internet Freedom Foundation condemned the shutdown the same day, noting that no suspension order had been published by the Home Ministry, the Department of Telecommunications, the Delhi government, or Delhi Police — so residents had no way to know who ordered it, on what legal basis, or for how long (The Wire). IFF's point was structural, not just rhetorical: an unpublished order cannot be challenged in court, which makes judicial review — the safeguard the Supreme Court built the entire shutdown framework around — illusory.
What the Court Actually Required
That framework comes from Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (10 January 2020), decided after the 2019 Kashmir communications blackout. The Court held that internet access is protected through Article 19(1)(a) (speech) and 19(1)(g) (trade and profession), and that any restriction must clear a four-stage proportionality test: a legitimate goal, a suitable measure, no less-restrictive alternative available, and a benefit that outweighs the harm to rights (judgment via Indian Kanoon). Crucially, it also required that suspension orders be made public so they are open to challenge, and barred indefinite suspensions altogether.
Parliament tried to operationalize this in the Telecommunications Act, 2023, whose Section 20 suspension power is now implemented through the Telecommunications (Temporary Suspension of Services) Rules, 2024, in force since November 22, 2024. Individual orders are capped at 15 days, and a Review Committee — Cabinet Secretary-led at the Union level, Chief Secretary-led in states — must convene within five days to assess an order's validity (The Leaflet's analysis of the 2024 Rules). That analysis also flags the loophole that produced Manipur's 2023 shutdown, sustained for months through back-to-back short orders under the predecessor 2017 rules: nothing in the current rules explicitly bars issuing a fresh order the moment the last one lapses.
The Steelman, and Where It Runs Out
There is a real security case here. A large, volatile crowd converging on Parliament on the opening day of a session, after police had already used tear gas, is precisely the scenario where authorities worry that live video and rumor amplify confrontation faster than they can respond to it. Short, geographically narrow network restrictions are a tool democracies reach for in genuine public-order emergencies, and the Suspension Rules' Rule 3(4) requirement — that authorities first show no less-drastic option would work — reflects a legitimate attempt to cabin that power.
But the Jantar Mantar shutdown fails that test on its own terms. A blanket mobile-data blackout across "parts of Central Delhi" doesn't just disconnect protest organizers; it hits every street vendor who can't take a UPI payment, every gig worker who loses a shift, every parent trying to confirm a child is safe, and every journalist trying to document what the police are doing — the exact accountability function IFF's statement singles out, and the one most needed on a day when the state's own account of the lathi charge is contested. That is not the least-restrictive measure Bhasin demands; it's the broadest one available, chosen because it's the easiest to execute.
The review mechanism doesn't fix this. A committee of the government's own secretaries meeting five days after the fact, with its findings never made public, reviews the executive's own decision without independent input and without transparency — a safeguard that satisfies the Rules' letter while missing Bhasin's actual demand for disclosure and enforceable review. And this was not an isolated incident: India recorded 65 shutdowns in 2025, second only to Myanmar worldwide and still the highest total of any democracy, six years after the Court called blanket, unpublished suspensions disproportionate.
The Fix Is Disclosure, Not Abolition
None of this requires denying the state emergency powers. It requires making the 2024 Rules' existing paper trail — the written order, the named authority, the Review Committee's findings — proactively public at the moment a shutdown is imposed, not producible only if a lawyer eventually goes looking for it. A standing public registry of suspension orders, modeled on what IFF has asked for, would cost the government nothing operationally and would restore the one thing Bhasin actually guaranteed: that citizens can see the order well enough to challenge it. Until that happens, shutdowns like July 20's will keep arriving as an anonymous SMS rather than a reviewable government act — and India's courts will keep being asked to bless the practice after the fact instead of policing it in real time.