Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena has empowered at least 23 Delhi Police officers to issue “takedown orders” to social media platforms and other intermediaries to remove “illegal content” under the Information Technology Act, Hindustan Times reported.
Earlier this month, prominent cartoonists Manjul and Satish Acharya were told by social media platform X that the Mumbai Police had objected to their artwork for allegedly violating India’s IT laws.
Under section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act intermediaries such as Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime can be held liable for third-party content if they fail to remove it despite being flagged by the “appropriate” government or “its agency”.
In a notification dated December 26, Delhi Police has been designated as the “nodal agency” in Delhi to perform the function, HT reported. The gazette notification, issued by the Delhi home department, empowers the DCPs of districts, intelligence fusion and strategic operations, economic offences wing, crime, and other divisions to issue “takedown notice pertaining to cases reported in their respective jurisdiction”. It further allows police officers to “notify the instances of information, data or communication link residing in or connected to a computer resource controlled by the intermediary being used to commit the unlawful act”.
In October 2024, Newslaundry had reported that a study, authored by professors of University of Groningen in the Netherlands, suggested that the IT regulations introduced by the BJP government were cultivating a climate of self-censorship, legal and economic threats for the audiovisual industry.
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