New Delhi: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has drafted a fresh set of amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, proposing to give statutory backing to its directions to social media platforms and digital intermediaries.
The draft, released for public consultation on Monday, is titled the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Second Amendment Rules, 2026.
MeitY has invited stakeholder feedback on the draft by 14 April. The ministry has said submissions “will be held in fiduciary capacity in MeitY and shall not be disclosed to anyone at any stage”.
The ministry has described the amendments as “clarificatory and procedural in nature”, saying they are “intended to improve legal certainty, strengthen enforceability of ministry directions, and ensure effective oversight of intermediary-hosted content, particularly news and current affairs.”
What the amendment proposes
The most consequential provision sits in the newly inserted sub-rule (4) to Rule 3, which deals with due diligence obligations of intermediaries. The draft states that platforms “shall comply with and give effect to any clarification, advisory, order, direction, standard operating procedure, code of practice or guideline issued by the ministry, by order in writing”.
Crucially, the draft ties this compliance directly to safe harbour protection. It says that adherence to such ministerial directions “shall form part of the due diligence obligations of the intermediary under section 79 of the Act”. Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 is the provision that shields platforms from legal liability for user-generated content.
While MeitY has issued directions and advisories to platforms in the past, there was no explicit rule-based provision that tied compliance to safe harbour. Platforms could contest or delay acting on advisories without a clearly defined statutory consequence. This amendment closes that gap—non-compliance now carries a defined legal cost built into the rules themselves: The loss of Section 79 immunity, which would expose platforms to liability for all content on their systems.
The draft does include procedural guardrails. It requires that every such direction “be issued in writing… clearly specify the statutory provision or legal basis under which it is issued… (and) be consistent with the provisions of the Act and these rules”. However, there is no requirement for judicial oversight before such directions take effect.
Data retention carve-outs
The amendment also inserts language in clauses (g) and (h) of Rule 3(1), which deal with takedown timelines and user data deletion. The inserted phrase reads: “without prejudice to any requirement relating to the preservation or retention of information applicable to intermediaries under the Act or any other law for the time being in force.”
In practical terms, this means that even when a platform is required to delete content or user data under the IT Rules, it cannot use that as a reason to destroy information it is otherwise required to retain under other laws—such as tax laws, financial regulations, or law enforcement-related retention requirements. Legal experts are likely to examine how this interacts with data protection obligations under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
User-generated news content
Rule 8 of the IT Rules governs the digital media ethics framework. The amendment proposes substituting the existing proviso to sub-rule (1) of Rule 8. The new proviso extends the application of Rules 14, 15, and 16—which deal with the grievance redressal mechanism for publishers—to cover “news and current affairs content hosted, displayed, uploaded, modified, published, transmitted, stored, updated or shared on the computer resources of the intermediaries by users who are not publishers”.
Until now, the digital media ethics code primarily applied to entities registered as publishers of news and current affairs. This change would bring ordinary users posting news content on platforms like X, YouTube, or Facebook within the ambit of the same framework.
The amendment does not directly expand the Ministry of Information Broadcasting’s powers, but it widens the mandate of the inter-departmental committee that the ministry chairs.
Under the proposed changes to Rule 14, the committee—which until now heard only grievances escalated from Level I and Level II of the publisher grievance mechanism—can now also take up matters “referred to it by the Ministry”. This means MeitY can route content-related matters directly to the ministry’s committee without waiting for a formal complaint to be filed by a user or publisher.
Where things stand
This is the second amendment to the IT Rules 2021 proposed in 2026. The first amendment, notified 10 February 2026, addressed AI-generated deep fakes and introduced mandatory watermarking and provenance metadata requirements for synthetic content. This second draft has not yet been notified in the Gazette of India and carries no official notification number, confirming it is still in the public consultation stage. Stakeholders have until April 14 to respond.
MeitY has not specified a timeline for when the amendment will be formally notified after the consultation closes.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)