Update

As part of the Draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Second Amendment Rules, 2026, published on 30 March 2026 for public consultation, MeitY proposed a new Rule 3(4). The rule would require intermediaries to comply with MeitY-issued clarifications, advisories, directions, standard operating procedures, and codes of practice as a condition of retaining safe-harbour protection from liability under Section 79 of the IT Act. According to reports of MeitY's internal deliberations, the ministry has been considering notifying this specific provision separately from the rest of the amendment package, rather than through the ordinary consultation and notification process applying to the other proposed changes, on the stated rationale that doing so would allow compliance to begin sooner.

The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights organisation, submitted formal comments in April 2026 calling for Rule 3(4) to be withdrawn in its entirety. IFF argued that the rule is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's 2015 judgment in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, which held that an intermediary's "actual knowledge" of unlawful content, triggering the loss of safe harbour, must come through a court order or a government notification following a defined legal process, not through informal executive communications. Two other proposed changes in the same draft package, expanding the scope of the Inter-Departmental Committee and bringing user-generated news content under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, have not progressed since the initial consultation.

Analysis

The debate over Rule 3(4) centres on what kind of government communication should be capable of stripping an intermediary of legal protection. Under the current, judicially settled position, that trigger is limited to court orders and formally notified government directions. Rule 3(4) would expand that list to include informal instruments such as advisories and SOPs, which are not required to follow the same procedural formality, are not necessarily subject to prior judicial or quasi-judicial scrutiny, and can be issued and revised by the ministry without a rulemaking process.

MeitY has defended the broader amendment package, including this rule, as a due-diligence measure that reflects how the ministry already communicates operational expectations to platforms. IFF and other critics argue that formalising compliance with such communications as a safe-harbour condition would, in effect, let executive preference substitute for the judicial and government-notification standard the Supreme Court set out in Shreya Singhal, since the rule's own safeguard, requiring that advisories be issued in writing, identify their legal basis, and remain consistent with the parent Act, is enforceable mainly after the fact, in litigation, rather than through any process that reviews an advisory's legal basis before it takes effect.

The prospect of notifying Rule 3(4) outside the ordinary consultation timeline for the rest of the amendment package has drawn particular attention from digital rights groups, who argue that doing so would limit the opportunity for public and judicial scrutiny of a provision they consider among the most consequential in the draft. MeitY has not issued a public statement specifying when, or whether, it will proceed with separate notification.