19th August, 2025
Launched by the Ministry of Home Affairs and managed by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), the SAHYOG Portal is a centralised digital dashboard that allows designated officers from various government departments and agencies to issue content takedown requests directly to online platforms like X/Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, etc.
In Part I of our analysis, we traced the portal’s transformation from a COVID-era public health coordination tool into India’s central content takedown mechanism, highlighting how it was quietly repurposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs and MeitY without any statutory mandate. SAHYOG enables government agencies and police officers to issue bulk takedown requests to platforms under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act by sidestepping the procedural safeguards required under Section 69A. We highlighted the portal’s lack of legislative foundation, its opaque processes that strip away due process protections like reasoned orders and hearings, and its growing role as a de facto censorship engine.
The Karnataka High Court is currently hearing a pivotal challenge to the SAHYOG Portal in a case filed by the X Corp. While X alleges that the portal enables censorship through the backdoor under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, thereby bypassing the detailed procedural structure of Section 69A, the government’s position is that the portal does not block content, but only coordinates and transmits notices under already existing obligations.
While X Corp has raised strong procedural objections, its case also rests on four main substantive arguments that go to the heart of the nature of power exercised through the portal:
1. Vague and Overbroad Standards for “Unlawful Content”- The SAHYOG Portal is designed to act on content deemed “unlawful” under Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 IT Rules, a rule that mandates intermediaries to take down content upon receiving “actual knowledge” from the government. However, X Corp and intervenors argue that the categories covered, such as “decency or morality,” “public order,” “defamation,” “obscenity”, are broad, vague, and open to subjective interpretation.
In the absence of clear statutory definition or binding judicial guidance, government officers effectively determine what counts as unlawful speech based on personal, political, or ideological biases. This creates an unconstitutional chilling effect on speech protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, as users and platforms pre-emptively suppress content to avoid risk.
2. Delegation of Core Judicial Functions to Executive Officers – The SAHYOG Portal functionally transfers the adjudication of speech from courts or statutory committees to untrained executive personnel. Decisions on whether a tweet or post constitutes “incitement to violence,” “fake news,” or “threat to national security” require careful, contextual analysis, something only courts are equipped to handle. By outsourcing this to ministries and local police, the State bypasses the institutional safeguards that are core to the adjudication of fundamental rights. Thus, X argues, the very substance of the power being exercised is unconstitutional, irrespective of the process.
3.Erosion of the Intermediary Safe Harbour-Section 79(1) protects intermediaries from liability for third-party content, unless they fail to comply with takedown requests under 79(3). But the SAHYOG Portal creates a system where i) takedown orders are issued en masse, without case-by-case legal determination, and ii) platforms like X are coerced into compliance, even when content is arguably protected, or else they risk losing their safe harbour status. This, X argues, converts intermediaries into quasi-censors, compelled to err on the side of suppression and thereby undermining the very principle of neutral hosting enshrined in Section 79.
4.Public Interest Journalism & the Disproportionate Impact on the Media-Intervenors such as DigiPub and Newslaundry have pointed out that the SAHYOG Portal has already been used to request takedown of news articles critical of government policies, or reporting on sensitive issues like elections, law enforcement, or communal violence. Since there’s no requirement under the portal for issuing speaking orders, or notifying either the publisher or the public, critical speech disappears silently. This substantively alters the public sphere and democratic discourse, a result that cannot be cured by better procedures alone.
Inside the High Court
We closely followed the hearings before the Karnataka High Court from 12th July onwards, which highlighted the constitutional stakes surrounding the SAHYOG Portal and its role in India’s digital governance framework. Over a series of sittings, the Court heard from counsel representing platforms, media stakeholders, and the Union government, with arguments addressing issues of intermediary liability, executive power, and freedom of expression.
Challenges to SAHYOG’s legality were first raised by Senior Advocate K.G. Raghavan, appearing for X Corp. He argued that the government’s reliance on Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act to justify content takedowns through SAHYOG was fundamentally misplaced. Section 79, he emphasized, is a safe harbour clause which shields intermediaries from liability when they comply with lawful orders and not an independent source of executive power. By permitting takedown requests outside the safeguards of Section 69A, the SAHYOG Portal functions as an extra-legal parallel regime of speech regulation. Dr. Aditya Sondhi, representing DigiPub, expanded this critique, noting that the portal’s reliance on broad grounds such as “public order” and “decency” enables covert censorship of critical journalism by bypassing the constitutional requirement of prior hearing and proportionality. He Both counsels argued that the lack of transparency, accountability, and prior hearing transforms SAHYOG into an unconstitutional mechanism that undermines Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
The government’s defence came from Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who downplayed these concerns by describing SAHYOG as a mere facilitation tool for communication between intermediaries and state agencies. He argued that intermediaries have always carried the obligation to remove unlawful content upon actual knowledge, and the portal simply operationalizes this pre-existing duty in the interest of law and order. Positioning the state as a guardian of public safety, Mehta invoked the reasonable restrictions permitted under Article 19(2). He also questioned the maintainability of the challenge itself, noting that X Corp, as a foreign entity, lacks fundamental rights under the Constitution. Further, the Solicitor General argued that SAHYOG had been created in response to intermediaries’ own demands for streamlined compliance mechanisms, thus portraying it as industry-driven rather than coercive.
Rebuttals from petitioners and intervenors pushed back against this framing. Raghavan stressed that the key constitutional concern was the transformation of facilitation into coercion. He reiterated that while intermediaries are liable under Section 79(3) if they ignore legitimate court or government orders, the SAHYOG Portal short-circuits this requirement by allowing executive authorities to issue mass takedown notices without individualized determination or accountability. Raghavan argued that this not only creates an atmosphere of fear among platforms but also forces them to overcompensate by removing lawful content to protect their safe harbour. He described this dynamic as a form of “indirect censorship,” whereby platforms become quasi-regulators out of compulsion. He also warned that the unstructured and expansive use of SAHYOG fundamentally alters the architecture of intermediary liability, turning a protective mechanism into an instrument of surveillance and suppression.
Sondhi reinforced that the defects in SAHYOG are structural, not procedural and that the very architecture of the portal bypasses judicial oversight and has already resulted in arbitrary takedowns of news content. He stressed that the constitutional infirmities of the SAHYOG Portal cannot be cured by procedural improvements alone because the very architecture of the portal enables the arbitrary suppression of speech. He reminded the Court that decisions involving speech, especially those implicating public interest reporting, require judicial scrutiny, which the SAHYOG Portal circumvents. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Shreya Singhal, he argued that “actual knowledge” cannot be interpreted to permit blanket, executive-driven censorship. The Court has no reserved judgement on the case.
The Karnataka High Court’s judgment will not only decide the fate of the SAHYOG Portal but will also set a precedent for the balance of power between executive authority and constitutional safeguards in India’s digital sphere. At its core, the case asks whether speech online can be curtailed through administrative fiat or whether the procedural and substantive guarantees of Article 19(1)(a) must remain the touchstone for state action. The outcome will reverberate beyond Karnataka, shaping how other states and the Union government design regulatory frameworks for intermediaries and how platforms calibrate their moderation practices in India. With free expression, press freedom, and the integrity of digital governance hanging in the balance, the Court’s decision could well mark a turning point in India’s internet regulation landscape.
