“Criticism makes democracy strong”. Then why Is India silencing its critics? 

It was April 18, 2018. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking through the official PMO India handle, declared to the world: “I want this Government to be criticised. Criticism makes democracy strong.”  

It was the kind of statement that political science textbooks are made of, the kind democracies point to with pride. It sounded magnanimous, it sounded principled, and it sounded like the words of a leader secure enough in his authority to welcome scrutiny. 

Fast forward to March 30, 2026. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) quietly released the Draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Second Amendment Rules, 2026. The rules have since detonated like a silent grenade in India’s digital public square, and what the blast has revealed is deeply unsettling: the government that once welcomed criticism is now systematically constructing the machinery to kill it. 

Also read: Sanchar Saathi App Mandate: India’s Surveillance Move 

The fine print of a dangerous draft 

Let us be clear about what these amendments actually propose, because the government’s own language is carefully designed to obscure the stakes. MeitY describes the draft as “clarificatory and procedural.” The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), India’s leading digital rights body, calls it something else entirely: “digital authoritarianism.” 

At the heart of the proposed changes is Rule 3(4), a new clause that would compel social media platforms and other intermediaries to comply with any and every advisory, direction, standard operating procedure, or guideline issued by MeitY, no matter how vague, no matter how rapidly issued, as a condition of retaining their “safe harbour” protection under Section 79 of the IT Act. Safe harbour is the legal shield that protects platforms from being held liable for the content their users post. Strip that shield away, and platforms will have no choice but to comply with the government’s every directive, or face lawsuits for every piece of user content on their site. 

As the IFF warned bluntly: the practical effect is a “perpetual compliance threat.” Over-compliance and over-censorship will become not the exception, but the operating norm. 

The influencer, the common man, and the journalist in the crosshairs 

Perhaps the most alarming dimension of these amendments is their scope. Previously, India’s regulatory architecture for digital media under Part III of the IT Rules applied to professional publishers and established media organisations. The Second Amendment seeks to extend this oversight to anyone who posts or shares news and current affairs content online, including YouTubers, Instagram creators, X users, bloggers, and the ordinary citizen who shares a news article with their commentary. 

Think about what this means. The college student who tweets about a protest. The homemaker who shares a video about a price hike on WhatsApp. The mid-level corporate professional who reposts a critical analysis of government policy on LinkedIn. The comedian satirising India’s powers that be. Under these proposed rules, they may all find their voices subject to government-controlled content regulation, brought under the jurisdiction of an Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) that the amendment would empower to examine not just “complaints” but any “matters” referred to it by MeitY itself. 

Three High Courts have already questioned the constitutional validity of this very oversight framework. The government is not waiting for judicial determination. It is using procedural amendments, not parliamentary legislation, to walk through a back door that courts have been trying to close, without discussion. 

Mann Ki Baat only flows one way? 

There is a particular kind of irony in this. Every month, the Prime Minister addresses the nation through Mann Ki Baat, a radio programme that has become a deeply cultivated exercise in one-directional national communication. It is the government speaking to its citizens, not the other way around. Now, with these amendments, India is moving toward a digital architecture where the government controls not just its own communication, but what citizens are permitted to say in response. 

From fact-checker Mohammed Zubair’s posts being blocked during Ramnavami, to parody accounts facing legal pressure, to the systematic harassment of dissenting voices online, the pattern is impossible to ignore. These amendments would codify that pattern, wrapping suppression in the language of “safety” and “accountability.” It is a government telling its citizens: your Mann Ki Baat does not matter. 

Contempt for Constitutional guardrails 

Legal scholars and rights activists are united on one point: this move undermines the Supreme Court’s landmark Shreya Singhal judgment of 2015, which established that platforms can only be asked to remove content on the basis of a court order or government notification, not on the basis of informal advisories. Rule 3(4) effectively lowers that constitutional threshold, granting the executive branch powers that even India’s highest court said it should not have. 

The consultation window offered is just 15 days, until April 14, 2026. For amendments that could fundamentally restructure online free speech in the world’s largest democracy, that timeline is not a public consultation. It is a formality waiting to be rubber stamped, and silence voices that dissent. 

Democracy dies in the dark 

The phrase on the masthead of The Washington Post has never felt more relevant in an Indian context: democracy dies in the darkness. And darkness is precisely what these amendments are engineered to manufacture, one quiet regulatory tweak at a time. 

India is not the only democracy to have wrestled with the question of how to govern online speech. But the finest constitutional democracies have drawn a clear line between regulating harm and silencing dissent. These amendments do not walk that line. They obliterate it. 

Citizens, activists, journalists, and platforms all have until April 14 to submit objections to MeitY. The IFF has called upon every stakeholder to do exactly that. This is not a moment for passive concern. It is a moment for loud, coordinated, constitutionally grounded outrage. 

In 2018, Mr. Modi told us that criticism makes democracy strong. In 2026, his government appears determined to test just how strong a democracy can remain when its citizens are no longer free to criticise at all.  

Make your voice heard. Submit their objections before 14 April 2026 at itrules.consultation@meity.gov.in