Draft rules for what online platforms can and cannot host run the risk of executive overreach

India’s proposed amendments of its IT Rules may read at first glance as a technical tightening of platform obligations. The government has described them as “clarificatory and procedural,” intended to improve legal certainty, strengthen enforceability and ensure more effective oversight of content hosted by online intermediaries, particularly news and current affairs.A closer reading, however, suggests that government ‘advisories,’ ‘guidelines’ and ‘clarifications’ could effectively become binding.

If so, the proposed framework in its current form may not only increase compliance costs for platforms, but also subtly move away from Parliament-led rule-making towards more immediate executive direction, with correspondingly fewer procedural safeguards. India has been tightening its digital laws.

Frameworks such as its AI Governance Guidelines and Digital Personal Data Protection Act were framed as ‘techno-legal’ tools, meant to test compliance, encourage innovation and nudge companies to build safety by design.This February, amended IT Rules obliged platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery (deepfakes included) within two hours of a complaint and other unlawful content within three hours of a government or court order. They must also adhere to a seven-day timeline for resolving user complaints, label AI-generated content and provide safeguards against deepfakes in general and posts on explosives or child sexual abuse.

Now, this week’s draft amendments—with a feedback window open till 14 April—have raised the stakes for platforms. Social media apps and search engines could lose safe-harbour protections under the IT Act if they fail to comply with government-issued advisories, exposing them to liability for user