Sahyog portal
Also called: Sahyog · Topic: Transparency, Accountability and e-Governance · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The Sahyog portal is an online system that ministries and government agencies use to send content-removal notices straight to social media platforms. It was built by the Ministry of Home Affairs through its Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C). It grew out of a MeitY office memorandum of October 2023, which let many ministries send takedown directions through one online interface. The notices rely on Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000. Under this clause, a platform loses its safe harbour (legal protection from liability for what users post) if it ignores a government notice. The portal matters because critics say it lets the government remove posts without the committee review and written reasons that Section 69A requires.
Example
X Corp challenged the portal in the Karnataka High Court. It argued that ministries were using Sahyog notices to get around Section 69A. On 24 September 2025, Justice M. Nagaprasanna dismissed the petition. He called Sahyog a public-good mechanism and said social media cannot be left in "anarchic freedom". X appealed, and a Division Bench led by Chief Justice Vibhu Bakru asked the Centre to respond. No final ruling has been reported yet.
Don't confuse with
- Section 69A blocking order: this is the IT Act's formal blocking power. A committee examines each order and records its reasons. The Supreme Court upheld it in Shreya Singhal (2015) because those checks exist. A Sahyog notice works through Section 79(3)(b) and does not go through that committee.
Recent developments
- March–July 2026: Government agencies sent about 1.95 lakh blocking orders (orders to make posts unavailable) to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. That works out to one order every 68 seconds, and Instagram alone got close to 1 lakh. Ministries, states and police can now send orders directly, including through Sahyog, and at this speed it is unlikely that a person checks each order carefully.
- 9 October 2026: In Ila Kazmi v. Union of India, the Delhi High Court asked the Centre, Delhi Police and Meta to produce the orders behind two blocks. The first was a journalist's Instagram reel showing police using facial recognition at Jantar Mantar. The second was the withholding of her account, meaning it was blocked in India but not deleted. Instagram had told her only that it was acting on "a legal request." The case tests whether a user whose post is blocked can see the order and challenge it, since Section 69A requires written reasons and the Sahyog route gives none.