The stand-up comedian, Kunal Kamra, has presented the case to the Bombay High Court complaining about the government portal called Sahyog arguing that it is an unconstitutional and unreasonable violation of freedom of speech. In his petition, submitted on Wednesday, Kamra raised the applicability of the amended Information Technology (IT) Rules which were announced in October 2025, as well as how the Sahyog portal operated.
Kamra claimed that the revised rules and the portal unjustifiably grant broad authority to the officials of the Central and the state governments to give takedown or blocking orders pertaining to content on social media without following the provisions of the safeguards established under the Information Technology Act, 2000. The petition states that these orders may be made peremptorily without the due process and other legal methods.
The government has come to the defense of the Sahyog portal claiming that it was developed to automate and make the process of giving notices to the intermediaries quicker and simpler with the IT act. The platform is supposed to facilitate facilitation of authorised government agencies to swiftly guide the clearing or crippling of internet content which is allegedly being utilized to perpetrate unlawful acts. The officials argue the portal will introduce intermediaries and enforcement bodies into one platform so that illegal digital content can be acted upon in a timely manner.
Nonetheless, the plea by Kamra argues that Rule 3 of the IT Rules and the Sahyog portal are unconstitutional in their form since they permit the blocking or takedown of content on such ambiguous and non-specific basis. Moved by an advocate Meenaz Kakalia, the petition mentions that such provisions put undue limitations to freedom of speech and are beyond the limitations allowed under Article 19 of the Constitution.
The comedian also claimed that the mechanisms expose all the online contents to capricious censorship which does not give any valuable solution to the victims. He alleged that the system puts unregulated authority in the hands of thousands of government officials in the centre and states to bring up serious concerns of abuse and deprivation of democratic freedoms.
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