New Delhi: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology will notify amendments to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, by the end of this month, with a senior official indicating that its most contested changes—including the one that would expand government oversight to ordinary social media users sharing news content—will remain intact.
“By the end of this month, we should be able to notify the final rules,” the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told ThePrint.
The draft Second Amendment Rules, released on 30 March, drew what the official said were “4,000-7,000” email submissions as they were opened to consultations with stakeholders and objections. MeitY extended the consultation period twice before closing it on 7 May. The official said all submissions had been reviewed.
The draft proposes two significant changes. The first, a new Rule 3(4), makes intermediary compliance with MeitY-issued clarifications, advisories, directions, standard operating procedures, codes of practice and guidelines a condition for retaining safe harbour under Section 79 of the IT Act.
Intermediaries are platforms that host multiple users, such as social media websites. Section 79 provides ‘safe harbour’ protection to intermediaries, shielding them from liability for third-party content shared on their platform.
The second key change is an amendment to Rule 8(1), which extends the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s (I&B) oversight mechanism—including its blocking and takedown powers—to intermediaries and users who are not registered as publishers but post or share news and current affairs content online.
Industry resistance to both provisions was evident at a closed-door consultation convened by MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan in April, and attended by representatives of Meta, Snapchat, YouTube, Google and ShareChat as well as industry bodies.
Those present at the meeting had told ThePrint that two concerns dominated the discussion: how to distinguish between intermediaries, users and publishers; and whether non-compliance with any written MeitY direction would now trigger loss of ‘safe harbour’ protection.
“One was the differentiation between intermediaries and users. That was a question that was brought up multiple times by intermediaries in the room. There was also the question of publishers being dragged into the domain of intermediaries,” one person who attended the meeting had said.
Asked about these concerns, the official said the final rules will include some clarification on the publisher-user distinction. “Intermediaries wanted a clarification that it should not be clumped with the publisher,” the official said.
But the underlying clause—bringing ordinary users who share news content under I&B ministry’s purview—will not be rolled back, the official asserted, adding that satire and parody would fall outside the Rules’ scope and that industry concerns were being overstated.
Critics remain unconvinced.
Digital rights activist and MediaNama founder Nikhil Pahwa, who attended a civil society consultation held the same day as the industry meeting, had said on X that the session was merely a “compliance exercise with no intent to explain or answer questions” raised. He also described the amendments as “an infrastructure for mass censorship”.
On artificial intelligence labelling, the official said the February 2026 deepfake framework would remain unchanged, and that the current draft’s stricter requirements for synthetic content would proceed.
The February amendment defined synthetically generated content as audio, visual or audiovisual material that is artificially or algorithmically created, generated or modified using a computer resource in a way that makes it appear authentic. It built in exemptions for good faith editing—AI used only for routine enhancement, colour correction or accessibility tools, without creating the impression of a real person or event. The official said these exemptions adequately addressed industry concerns, and that the labelling obligation would not pose a problem for platforms using AI for enhancement rather than generation.
The latest draft goes further on both visibility and traceability: labels on AI-generated content must now be continuous and clearly visible throughout the duration of the content, rather than merely visible at some point. And platforms will be required to embed permanent metadata making the content traceable to its originating system.
The Rules, if notified, will be the second set of amendments this year and will come alongside the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, separate but yet-to-be-notified guidelines that lay down how companies handle data of Indian citizens.
Implementation of the two Rules would substantially revise India’s digital governance infrastructure within a year.
On Friday, the official said the government’s intent was to target illegal content rather than its source. “Content is illegal. Who is publishing is not important that way,” the official said, adding: “But we will try that maximum care should be taken not to hurt the freedom of speech.”
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