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The Union government issued nearly 1.95 lakh blocking orders to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July, averaging about 1,275 orders a day, or roughly one order every 68 seconds, according to data accessed by The Indian Express.
The blocking directives represented a sharp increase compared with the 2,312 orders sent to 19 online platforms through the government’s Sahyog portal between October 2024 and October 2025. That earlier figure translated to an average of about six blocking orders a day.
Instagram received the largest share of the latest directives, with nearly one lakh orders during the five-month period. Facebook received around 80,000, while YouTube received nearly 15,000. Together, Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook accounted for roughly nine out of every 10 orders issued to the three platforms.
Each blocking order can cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts. Most of the orders were issued by central and state agencies through the Union Home Ministry’s Sahyog portal.
The five-month period also coincided with student protests over the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations. The protests began in Delhi on June 6, with students demanding the resignation of then Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and spread to other parts of the country. The agitation was called off on July 25 after Pradhan resigned.
The scale of the directives also coincided with a change in how Meta responds to government takedown requests. Meta integrated its Application Programming Interface (API) with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government-mandated takedown timeline. This allows content flagged through government directions uploaded on the portal to be automatically removed from Meta platforms without a separate human review.
Amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, introduced in February, require social media intermediaries to remove “unlawful content” within three hours of receiving directions from the appropriate government authority or a court.
The blocking directives are largely issued under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The provision requires platforms to remove posts deemed unlawful by government and law enforcement agencies in order to retain the legal immunity available to intermediaries for user-generated content.
Such orders are separate from directions issued under Section 69A of the IT Act, which is used for online censorship and is largely associated with matters involving national security and public order.
The Home Ministry’s 2024-25 annual report recorded that a little over 1.11 lakh pieces of “suspicious online content” had been blocked until March 2025 under Section 79(3)(b), including through the Sahyog portal.
Information shared by users on social media indicated that some Instagram takedowns involved posts supporting the student protests, criticism of the government’s ethanol fuel blending policy and content related to the West Bengal Assembly elections, besides deepfakes. Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal also said some of his Instagram posts had been blocked in India.
The Opposition criticised the scale of the blocking orders. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the Narendra Modi government “has launched its most brazen and calculated attack” on Indians’ democratic right to “speak, to question and to dissent”.
Kharge further alleged that creators, journalists and citizens posting criticism of the government faced “immediate takedowns, threatening FIR notices and coordinated intimidation”.
However, the number of government blocking orders does not necessarily correspond to the overall volume of content removed by platforms. Meta’s transparency report showed that between July and December 2025, more than 23 million pieces of content were taken down in Indonesia, compared with more than 41,000 pieces of content in India.
Meta has said that when it restricts content based on legal requests from governments and courts, it generally informs users about the state authority behind the request. However, it does not do so in India and some other markets because of “legal obligations and regulatory considerations”.
