New Delhi: The central government has told a Supreme Court-monitored committee that it is examining a review of the “safe harbour” protection that shields online intermediaries from liability for what users post on their platforms, and is weighing an explicit provision in law to make intermediaries liable for the abuse of their platforms so that victims of cyber fraud can claim compensation.
The proposals are recorded in the minutes of the fifth meeting of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) held on 14 July, 2026, annexed to the fourth status report filed before the Supreme Court on 3 August by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), in suo motu writ petition ‘Victims of Digital Arrest Related to Forged Documents’. A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana passed fresh directions Tuesday.
Safe harbour is the legal principle under which an intermediary—a platform that hosts or transmits content created by its users, such as a messaging service, social media network or marketplace—is not held liable for that third-party content.
In India, it flows from Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which exempts an intermediary from liability for information it merely stores or transmits, provided it does not initiate or modify the content and observes “due diligence” while discharging its duties.
That due diligence is spelt out in the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which require platforms to remove unlawful content on being notified by a court or government agency, appoint grievance and compliance officers, and assist law enforcement. The protection is conditional: a platform that fails to meet these obligations can lose it.
The review flagged in the digital-arrest proceedings converges with a sharper, parallel push in Parliament.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, this week said safe harbour protection under Section 79 should be withdrawn from Meta if its CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not apologise over the temporary removal of a Facebook video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and stated that the panel had unanimously recommended withdrawing the protection from social media companies that fail to comply with Indian laws. The panel questioned Meta officials over the availability of objectionable content, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
However, a parliamentary committee cannot itself withdraw safe harbour. Section 79 is a statutory protection, and amending or removing it requires Parliament to legislate, which in practice would need the government to bring an amendment; a committee’s role is to examine, summon and recommend. Separately, under the existing law an individual platform can lose the protection under Section 79(3) if it fails to act on a court order or a government notification—but whether that threshold is met in a particular case is a matter for the courts, not the committee.
Under the head of issues requiring action by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the digital-arrest committee recorded a review of the safe-harbour provision, alongside a reiterated need for an explicit provision in the IT Act making intermediaries liable for the abuse of their platforms so that victims can seek redressal in the form of compensation—a change that would carve into the immunity Section 79 currently affords, and that, unlike a committee recommendation, would require a statutory amendment.
The push comes against the backdrop of an admission, recorded in an earlier meeting, about how little reach the government has over some platforms.
MeitY told the committee it had faced difficulty establishing contact with the platform ‘Signal’, which does not make its Grievance Officer contact details publicly available, and that no comprehensive mechanism is presently in place to ensure that intermediaries comply with the IT Rules, 2021, or to address instances of non-compliance. I4C was asked to send MeitY a formal submission on the coordination difficulties in relation to Signal.
The IT Rules require intermediaries to appoint a Grievance Officer, a Nodal Contact Person and a Chief Compliance Officer, and to publish their contact details—the mechanism through which users and law enforcement are meant to reach a platform. The committee flagged the need for a national registration system for all intermediaries operating in India, carrying these officers’ details, after law enforcement reported difficulty obtaining them.
It also sought the regulation of digital advertisements, which it noted are widely abused for committing cybercrimes, and the notification of rules under Section 67C of the IT Act for the preservation and sharing of data by intermediaries.
On the platforms’ own obligations, the committee recorded a live tension over encryption. In a submission annexed to the report, WhatsApp told the committee that rules requiring the identification and labelling of “Synthetically Generated Information”—deepfakes commonly used in digital-arrest video calls—could not feasibly be applied to end-to-end encrypted content, since no one outside a conversation, “not even WhatsApp”, can access it, and that its detection measures operate only on unencrypted surfaces.
The report also records the status of a portal MeitY is building—the Adjudication and Compliance Digital System (ACDS), an end-to-end platform to run quasi-judicial workflows under Section 46 of the IT Act, connecting complainants, accused parties and adjudicating officers. In its Action Taken Report, MeitY said the portal had been developed but that certain legal and procedural issues under the existing statutory framework were under examination; the committee asked it to expedite the system.
The bench, in its order, directed MeitY, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and I4C, in consultation with intermediaries, to examine the proposal on time-based restrictions on audio and video calls and to place a note on feasibility, use cases, safeguards and alternatives before it.
The matter has been listed for 16 September.
(Edited by: Amrtansh Arora)
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