The government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.
This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.
In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, the newspaper quoted Right to Information records as having shown.
Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.
The youth protests against the alleged mismanagement of competitive exams in the country took place during the five-month period between March and July. The protests began in Delhi on June 6, demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister and spread to other parts of the country. The agitation was called off on July 25 after Pradhan resigned.
The protest was largely driven by social media with Instagram playing a key role in mobilising youngsters.
An unidentified government official told The Indian Express that a “considerable share” of the blocking orders were issued during the protests.
Most of the blocking orders were issued by central and state agencies through the Union home ministry’s Sahyog portal, the newspaper reported.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders, The Indian Express reported.
According to the amendments introduced to the 2021 Information Technology Rules in February, social media intermediaries must remove “unlawful content” within three hours of receiving directions from the appropriate government or a court.
The integration allows content flagged through government directions on the portal to be automatically removed from Meta’s platforms without a separate human review.
Calculated attack on democratic right, says Congress
The Opposition criticised the widespread use of blocking orders by the Union government.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Narendra Modi government “has launched its most brazen and calculated attack on the democratic right of every Indian to speak, to question and to dissent”.
Any creator, journalist or citizen who posts “something critical of this government today faces immediate takedowns, threatening FIR notices and coordinated intimidation”, he said on social media.
“Meanwhile, the ruling party’s Andhbhakts freely doxes women, issues rape threats and runs organised harassment campaigns online without a single legal consequence, because none less than the PM follows many such trolls!” Kharge added.
Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.
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