On 9 and 10 October 2026, India's Home Ministry cut mobile internet in central Delhi. The first order covered a 4-km radius around the Janpath–Kartavya Path area, from 10 pm on 9 October to 10 pm on 10 October. The second covered a 500-metre radius around eight locations, from noon to 10 pm on 10 October. MediaNama reports that the 9 October order was marked 'Top Secret' and became public only after ANI published it. The Supreme Court directed on 11 October that internet facilities 'should function unhindered', and MediaNama documented restrictions continuing afterwards.
The central problem is not only that the shutdown happened. The orders were hidden from the people they affected, which meant those people could not challenge them.
The government's case deserves a fair hearing
The strongest argument for the Home Ministry is that governments have a real duty to prevent violence, and that police sometimes need to cut mobile data quickly to stop crowds mobilising. The Home Secretary's affidavit says Delhi Police requested the shutdowns, and it points to protests at Jantar Mantar on 20 July 2026 as context. The Ministry also says the restrictions were narrow in space and time. The first order lasted 24 hours, the second about ten hours, and Wi-Fi and other non-cellular connections were not cut. If a shutdown is brief, localised and tied to a specific threat, it can be argued to meet the proportionality test.
That argument is not frivolous. But it can only be tested if the order is visible. A claim of proportionality that no court or citizen can inspect is simply an assertion.
What Bhasin actually requires
In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (10 January 2020), the Supreme Court held that only the least restrictive measure may be used where fundamental rights are curtailed. It also held that a decision curtailing rights without appropriate justification is disproportionate. The Internet Freedom Foundation reads paragraph 96 of the judgment as requiring that all orders passed under the Suspension Rules be 'made freely available', so that affected people can challenge them in the High Court. The Court read that duty in even though the 2017 Suspension Rules do not mention publication. Those rules, issued under section 7 of the Telegraph Act, place the power to order a suspension with the Union Home Secretary, or with a state Home Secretary for state matters.
A 'Top Secret' marking cannot be squared with that. If an order can be read only after a leak, no one can file the Article 226 challenge that Bhasin contemplates while the shutdown is in force. A twenty-four-hour shutdown is over before most litigants can reach a courtroom. Secrecy therefore does more than breach a procedural rule. It makes the shutdown effectively unreviewable.
This is a pattern, not an aberration
The Delhi episode fits a documented record of non-compliance. A May 2024 Oxford Human Rights Hub analysis counted 428 shutdowns in India between 2020 and 2024. It cited IFF and Human Rights Watch data showing that 11 of the 18 states that shut down the internet between January 2020 and December 2022 did not publish their orders, and it described non-publication as the norm. IFF began documenting the same problem in July 2020, when it could not find orders for shutdowns in Jabalpur, Meghalaya, Aligarh and West Bengal and wrote to the Department of Telecom and four state governments.
What is new in October is the seniority of the actor and the setting. This was the Union Home Ministry, in the national capital, with the Supreme Court actively seized of the matter.
The apology is a distraction; the secrecy is not
After media reports on the Ministry's 'unconditional apology' to the Court, the Ministry's PIB account said the apology was a mandatory procedural opening to any affidavit answering a contempt notice. It added that 'no case of contempt is made out'. That explanation may be accurate as a matter of court practice, and it would be unfair to read the apology as a confession.
But the clarification leaves the substantive question untouched. Whether the shutdowns were lawful depends on whether they were necessary, proportionate and reviewable. The Ministry's position that the actions were 'fully compliant with the law' needs the orders, reasons and review-committee records to be put in front of the public and the courts. Defending proportionality while keeping the order secret asks everyone to take the government's word for it.
Why this matters beyond Delhi
Mobile shutdowns impose broad costs. They cut off payments, delivery services, emergency communication and news, and they fall on people who had nothing to do with any protest. A pro-innovation, pro-speech policy position does not rule out all emergency powers. It asks that such powers be narrow, justified in writing and open to challenge.
A workable fix is modest and does not require new legislation:
- Publish every suspension order on a central portal within hours of issue, with the reasons and the geographic and time limits.
- Publish review-committee findings, which IFF and Human Rights Watch found are generally not made public.
- Treat a 'Top Secret' marking on a domestic telecom suspension as presumptively invalid unless a court has approved a specific exception.
- Report aggregate shutdown data annually, so Parliament can judge whether proportionality is being applied in practice.
The same pattern of opacity shows up elsewhere in India's information controls. MediaNama reported on 16 October that a blocking order against an Environmental Reporting Collective reel, issued via the Sahyog portal, surfaced only on 23 July, after journalists went to the Delhi High Court. When orders emerge only through litigation or leaks, the review system exists on paper and not in practice.
The Supreme Court has the matter before it. It can settle whether Bhasin's publication rule binds the Union Home Ministry as plainly as it binds the states, and it can say whether secrecy is ever compatible with a measure that limits constitutional rights. The answer should be no. A government confident that its shutdowns are proportionate should be willing to show its reasoning in public.