India's Two-Track Digital Governance Machine

In the first week of August 2026, a member of Parliament from the ruling BJP delivered an ultimatum to Meta: apologize within three days for erroneously removing a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or lose the legal protection that lets the company operate in India. ^[1]

Mark Zuckerberg must apologize within three days. — Nishikant Dubey

The threat was not unprecedented. In April, the government had warned X the same way — revoke safe harbour under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act — for failing to remove six tweets by journalist Rana Ayyub, posted between 2013 and 2017, that a Delhi court called highly derogatory, inflammatory, and communal. ^[2] The symmetry is instructive, and it is not about what the platforms did. Meta removed content featuring the Prime Minister and was threatened with reclassification as a publisher for the error. X refused to remove a journalist's decade-old posts and was threatened with the same reclassification for the refusal. The common element is the lever: Section 79, the provision that shields platforms from liability for user-generated content so long as they remain neutral intermediaries, is being turned into a sword. The threat of reclassifying a platform as a publisher — liable for every post, every tweet, every video — functions as a content-control mechanism more sweeping than any direct censorship order, because it shifts the burden of removal onto the platform itself. While the executive refines this lever, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Surya Kant has been building a parallel regulatory architecture of its own. In November 2025, the court called for an independent, autonomous social media content regulator, with the Chief Justice observing that anyone can create a YouTube channel and say anything under the guise of free speech while the law stands helpless. ^[3] He was careful to add that the court would not put its seal on anything that could gag someone — it would only address the legislative vacuum. The vacuum-filling has been methodical. In June 2026, the court released draft AI regulations establishing that artificial intelligence may assist but never independently adjudicate, pass sentences, or conduct bail risk-scoring. The framework creates a three-tier oversight body — and embedded within it is a Joint Secretary from the IT Ministry, placing an executive officer inside the judiciary's own AI governance structure. ^[4]

no judicial outcome shall be reached through Algorithmic Decision-Making alone. — Supreme Court of India

In July, the court banned unauthorized social media clips of its own proceedings, citing AI voice-cloning and motivated narratives. The Chief Justice complained that words he never said were being thrust upon him and threatened to restrict live-streaming entirely. ^[5] The same month, the court began considering a 24/7 emergency judicial access system, with the Chief Justice suggesting a one-hour response window for urgent mentions — extending the court's reach into nights and holidays. ^[6] On the executive side, the government has been moving in parallel. In February 2026, it amended the IT Rules to compress content takedown timelines from 36 hours to 3 hours, with loss of safe harbour for non-compliance — a mandate the Internet Freedom Foundation warned eliminates any meaningful human review, forcing platforms toward automated over-removal. ^[7] The court's call for a social media regulator points toward the same destination: both tracks are filling the same legislative vacuum, the government through mandated timelines and the court through proposed institutions. The procedural bridge between these two tracks has a name: Tushar Mehta, the Solicitor General of India. Mehta appears as the government's interlocutor in nearly every major digital case before the Supreme Court. He argued for the social media regulator. ^[3] He supported the ban on unauthorized court clips. ^[5] He called Telegram the new dark web while defending the government's temporary ban of the platform for 150 million users during the NEET exam. ^[8] He pressed the court to revive the Fact-Check Units that a lower court had struck down. ^[9] The same voice, arguing the state's position across the docket, case after case — a procedural constant that makes the structural complementarity between the two tracks visible at the level of personnel. The court has not surrendered its independence. When the target is a foreign technology company, it has been willing to push back hard. In February, it restrained Meta and WhatsApp from sharing user data, with the Chief Justice calling the practice a decent way of committing theft and telling the company to leave India if it could not follow the Constitution. ^[10] When the Delhi High Court questioned the proportionality of banning Telegram for 150 million users, the court engaged the argument rather than dismissing it. ^[8] And when the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab shut down a newspaper's printing presses — allegedly in retaliation for critical coverage — the Supreme Court ordered them restored. ^[11] But the pattern shifts when the digital dispute touches the ruling party's own narrative. The court agreed to hear the government's appeal to revive Fact-Check Units under Rule 3(1)(V) of the 2023 IT Rules, which would have let the government identify and force removal of fake content about its own business — the Chief Justice noted that social media can damage institutions like the Indian Army — though the court stopped short of staying the lower court's order striking the units down. ^[9] When petitions sought new hate-speech laws and FIRs against BJP leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma, the court ruled that existing statutes suffice and the real problem is enforcement — then declined to register the FIRs. ^[12][13] When challenges to the Election Commission's electoral roll revisions in Tamil Nadu reached the court, the Chief Justice refused to fast-track them, saying it would set a bad precedent. ^[14] The mechanism has a name, and it was supplied by a sitting member of the court itself. In July, Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan warned publicly that dissent in India is being criminalized and that restrictive bail conditions — including bans on social media use and public meetings — have become a mechanism of control enforced by the courts themselves. ^[15]

I am sure consuming chicken biryani is not an offence. — Ujjal Bhuyan