Govt Further Tightens Social Media Rules for Content Takedown; 118 Opposition MPs Submit Petition to Remove LS Speaker Om Birla; Meta Blocks Instagram Accounts of CPM Paper and News Portal No Cap
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
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February 10, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia
In a brazen display of its commitment towards tightening the noose around free expression online, the Modi government has modified the IT Rules to require social media firms to take down offending content within three hours of being informed about it as opposed to the earlier 36 hours starting on the 20th, it has announced. The change, note Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, “reinforces India’s position as one of the world’s most aggressive regulators of online content”. A technology law advocate pointed out that it is “practically impossible for social media firms to remove content in three hours … This assumes no application of mind or real world ability to resist compliance.”
Kalra and Vengattil also note that the Modi government has issued “thousands of takedown orders in recent years” – however it is less fastidious when it comes to notifying the publishers whose content it seeks to have taken down, as was the case when it did not inform The Wire before ordering its satirical cartoon of Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed from its social media handles yesterday. The outlet writes in its editorial today that despite the fact that Modi himself has professed the important role of criticism in a properly functioning democracy and even as the likes of Himanta Biswa Sarma can propagate illegal and hateful content with impunity, the truth is that
“For a government that leverages the information environment on the basis of its stranglehold over most big media and aggression on social media, any alternative idea, however small, is seen as a potential needle which can bring the balloon of propaganda and silence down.”
“Arguing for a free press,” it adds, is “not about protecting journalists. It is about ensuring that the government of the day is kept honest, with constant questioning, interrogation and demands for accountability.”
But.
Meta has blocked Instagram accounts of the Malayalam newspaper Deshabhimani, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and online news portal ‘No Cap’. Speaking with The News Minute, Sajan Evugen, the Coordinating Editor for the digital edition of Deshabhimani, said that their Instagram account was disabled on February 1, the same day of the Union Government’s budget presentation. Over the past 10 days,
