New Delhi: The Wire has accessed the User Manual for Sahyog Portal (IT intermediaries) that lays down the union government’s takedown mechanism for content online. The never-made-public manual makes it clear that orders are unilateral, and a direct correspondence between government agencies and intermediaries like social media platforms and telecom providers. The manual excludes journalists or content creators from its definition of “stakeholders”. It does not detail any independent review process before an item is ordered to be taken down.Rolled out in October 2024, the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA)’s Sahyog portal has been developed with the stated motive of automating the process of central and state authorities, including police officers, sending notices to intermediaries, which carry content-removal directions under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and Rule 3(1)(d) of the Intermediary Guidelines, 2021. The use of the portal to issue takedown orders by circumventing Section 69(A) of the IT Act – that specifically deals with blocking orders – has faced criticism, as has the opaque nature of an operation that allows government censorship.On February 10, the Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, that cuts down the takedown timelines for all content from 24-36 hours to three hours. The rules come into effect tomorrow, on February 20, the day the high-profile AI India Summit ends in New Delhi.The Sahyog portal has been developed by the MHA’s Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C). Before this, written orders stating reasons, notice to the affected party, and review by a judicial committee were needed for blocking content.The Sahyog manual, seen by The Wire, demonstrates how new rules are actually about putting a formal censorship mechanism in place with the MHA in charge, effectively bypassing the ministry of information and broadcasting and MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology).‘Stakeholders’ don’t include affected partiesThe manual does not list the affected parties whose content will be taken down among ‘stakeholders’. It defines stakeholders of the Sahyog portal as the MHA, I4C, MeitY, DoT (Department of Telecommunications), ‘Authorised Agencies of Central Government’, ‘Authorised Agencies/Nodal officers of States/UTs’, and ‘Intermediaries’ who will “work in tandem to create a safe cyber space.” ‘Intermediaries’ imply online platforms that allow users to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify or access information using its services. This can include network service and network service providers (Internet Service Providers), search engines, web-hosting services and social media platforms where links, URLs are shared.‘Stakeholders’ defined by the Sahyog portal’s user manual.The manual also provides a work flow on the Sahyog portal. Here it states that the authorised agencies of the central or state, or law enforcement agencies will raise a request for removal of unlawful/harmful information from the web content through Sahyog Portal. The request will then go to respective Intermediaries/ ISPs (Internet Service Providers) for removal or to disable access. In the case of request to Intermediaries/Social Media Intermediaries, the notices will directly escalate to those intermediaries, while in the case of ISPs it will be escalated to DoT and DoT will further send it to ISPs.The work flow in the manual further provides that IT Intermediaries/ISPs’ ‘Action Taken Report’ will be visible to these stakeholders through a national dashboard. IT intermediaries have the option to seek additional information or evidence from authorised agencies and can raise requests for inability to comply with remarks mentioning the reasons for non-compliance. This is, however, subject to the authorised officer’s views. If the authorised officer agrees with the remarks, the request will be closed, but in case of disagreement, the officer can provide further remarks and request compliance. “If the intermediaries comply on (sic) the request after further remarks the request will be closed. If the intermediary refuses compliance, there is a provision for seeking show cause notice by the intermediary for non-compliance. If the intermediary replies, the authorised officer may accept or not accept the explanation. If accepted the request will close. If not, the authorised officer may proceed to take action as per the rule 7 of the IT(Intermediary) Rule, 2021,” the manual states.In addition, the manual also provides for how stakeholders can see the total number of takedown order requests for any given state, total pending requests as well as ‘Removed or Disabled Access Requests’ URLs, Under Process URLs, Unable to Comply URLs, Additional Information Requested URLs, and Pending Requests URLs. The reasons for any action will also be visible only to these stakeholders.The manual states that Sahyog has been developed to automate the process of sending notices to intermediaries by the Appropriate Government or its agency under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000 to “facilitate the removal or disabling of access to any information, data or communication link being used to commit an unlawful act.” “It will bring together all Authorised Agencies of the Appropriate Government and all the intermediaries on one platform for ensuring immediate action against the unlawful information by removing or disabling access and providing a clean and safe cyber space to the citizens of India. Notices can be issued by the Authorized Agencies on their own or at the instance of any court of competent jurisdiction,” it says.Broad action allowed, no independent reviewThe manual notes the broad range of action allowed under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act that allows removal or disabling of access “not only to unlawful information, but also to any information, data, or communication link which is being used to commit an unlawful act.”Within the scope of this section lies links used to commit child sexual exploitation material (CSEM), self-harm content, impersonation, fake news, illegal adult content, non-consensual intimate images, obscene, pornographic content, fraudulent apps or URLs, misinformation and disinformation, harassment and cyberbullying, copyright and intellectual property violation, unauthorised gambling and betting, money laundering, doxxing, hacking, malware, data leak, content targeting a particular race, religion, or gender involving harassment or threats, phishing, human trafficking and illegal recruitment, criminal infrastructure purchase and sale including mule bank accounts, SIM cards, and servers, illicit trade involving drugs and weapons, targeted /sponsored and fraudulent advertisement issued by fraudsters etc.The user manual shows that the Sahyog portal does not call for independent review of such takedown orders which are essentially confidential in the form of direct communication from the government or law enforcement agencies to social media intermediaries or telecom providers without intimation to the creator of the content itself. Earlier mechanisms did not have the option of an independent review either. Under Section 69A of the IT Act, requests for blocking online content could be made to the government, if found valid, then such a request would go to a committee of senior bureaucrats, while the platform putting out the content is notified and allowed to respond but there was no review provision either with challenges only allowed to be filed in court.Pushback against SahyogOver 2,300 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, between October 2024 and October 2025, the Indian Express has reported using data obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.Sahyog has also faced legal challenges, with X corp challenging the government’s use of the portal. In September, the Karnataka high court dismissed X’s petition and called Sahyog “an instrument of public good” and said that it “stands as a beacon of cooperation” between citizens and social media intermediaries.The use of the portal has important implications for news dissemination online. Digipub in its intervention in the case filed by X Corp with assistance from lawyers at the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said that platforms like X act as conduits for disseminating information and Article 19(1)(a) extends to informing, critiquing and contributing to formation of public opinion.The application had stated that the Sahyog portal operates without any statutory footing and exceeds the limited blocking powers contained in Section 69A of the Information Technology Act (IT) Act. In 2015 the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India upheld the constitutionality of Section 69-A.