“In my thinking, they are now the social media censor board rather than something like an Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC),” commented Nikhil Pahwa, Founder and Editor of MediaNama, while moderating a session on MeitY’s proposed amendments to the IT Rules. The amendments have the potential to expand the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s (MIB) reach beyond publishers to regular internet users if they post anything related to ‘news and current affairs’. Throughout the discussion, legal experts and members of the press condemned the way the IDC functions and explained why it raises concerns around free speech and privacy.

When IDC summoned a news content creator, I was summoned by MIB’s Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) for a thumbnail. The irony is that they didn’t even watch the whole video and summoned me to the hearing for a thumbnail,” said Ambuj Kumar, Editor of Lokhit India, a Delhi-based digital media company whose audience is largely on YouTube and Facebook. Kumar was describing his experience of receiving an IDC summons from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in December 2025 during MediaNama’s discussion on IT Rules and the Future of Online Speech in India, held in Delhi on April 23.

On the vagueness and broadness of the term “matters”, Alaqshendra Singh, Associate Partner at TMT Law Practice, said: “The terms like ‘matters’ or ‘user’ are not defined. The distinction between a publisher and a user is not defined. What you’ve essentially done is remove the tier-1 and tier-2 processes, and it straight up goes to the IDC. The IDC has the liberty to make arbitrary decisions. In effect, what they’re trying to do is introduce a sweeping provision that gives them discretion to do whatever they deem fit, whether the subject is a publisher, an intermediary, or even a user.”

“Strengthening of Rule 14 to expand the scope and functioning of the Inter-Departmental Committee to consider matters beyond complaints, including those referred by the Ministry,” reads an excerpt from MeitY’s proposed draft amendments to the IT Rules, 2021. You can read the full explainer here.

Alaqshendra was referring to the following three-tier mechanism under Part III of the IT Rules:

• Self-regulation by the publishers;
• Self-regulation by the self-regulating bodies of the publishers;
• Oversight mechanism by the Central Government. 

“…an oversight mechanism to control the media by the government may rob the media of its independence and the fourth pillar, so to say, of democracy may not at all be there,” said Madras high court in 2021 while upholding Bombay HC’s interim stay on the government’s oversight mechanism.

IDC — the judge, jury, and executioner: “The IDC itself is a problem because it is the executive acting as the jury, the judge, and the executioner. Then, on top of that, they have the power to suo motu, without a complaint, take up matters. Everything is so general now. It’s classic executive overreach with the power of impunity,” said Jatin Gandhi, Vice-President of the Press Club of India.

“If we can have 16,000 police stations being empowered to issue takedown notices, we should first be having these 16,000 discussions in open society and build up to a law,” he remarked, while calling for parliamentary procedure-based lawmaking instead of executive-run backdoor mechanisms to achieve the same goals.

How IDC functions and why user anonymity is at risk: “First, the entire account gets blocked. It won’t be unblocked until you appear before the committee. When you appear, you have to produce your Aadhaar card, which has been linked to your social media account. The committee will make you sign an undertaking. You’re essentially in the position of a hostage: you just want your account back,” said Apar Gupta, Founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation.

When Pahwa asked whether this was a mechanism to remove user anonymity, Gupta responded: “I don’t think so. They may not have thought that far ahead. But it is the unintentional benefit of sitting at a buffet; you get to eat one more thing.”

Intermediaries also can be part of IDC hearings: “The intermediaries have been, we are given to understand, given notices and sometimes attend these hearings when the users are not there or have already appeared before them. That’s what we need to understand. That is where they get these orders. I would just say that there’s a lack of transparency; there’s a lack of judicial process,” said Gupta.

On the IDC’s reluctance to offer online hearings, Gupta said: “There’s already a pre-existing order. You’re going to them for an examination, and the processes have also varied over time. First, what’s important to understand is that a lot of the content they block affects people who are not based in India. Sometimes they offer a VC hearing, sometimes they don’t. They have, in fact, repeatedly stated in courts that they no longer want to offer VC hearings because people record them, yet they are exercising a quasi-judicial role.”

On the IDC’s objection to the presence of lawyers during hearings, Gupta said: “This country has open courts where proceedings are live-webcast. When we have attended hearings with our clients, they have also objected to the presence of a lawyer, but the lawyer’s presence has been permitted because there are directions to that effect in the High Court order. So they will be hauled out for contempt if they do not permit the lawyer with the person.”

MediaNama hosted this discussion with support from Meta, Amazon, and Google. Our community partners for this event are Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), Centre For Communication Governance (CCG), and Digipub.

Also Read: 

• No notice, no explanation, no recourse: how content creators experience censorship in India
• ‘No transparency’: experts warn of expanding powers to block online speech in India
• How India’s content takedown framework was built and where It has gone wrong

You can also read MediaNama’s coverage of this event here.