New Delhi: Between March and July, there was one blocking order every 68 seconds, on an average, for online content by the government in India. This amounts to around 1,275 every day, nearly 1.95 lakh in just five months, according to a report by The Indian Express.There has been a surge in blocking orders issued by the Union government to restrict online content sent to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube this year at a time when students across the country were protesting against exam leaks, with the biggest protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in June and July. This is compared to a total of 2,312 blocking orders between October 2024 and October 2025 to 19 online platforms sent through the Sahyog portal, translating to a daily average of six such orders a day, according to data accessed through an Right to Information (RTI) filing by Express last year.While a monthly break-up wasn’t available, per the report, a senior government official said that a “considerable share” of the blocking orders were issued during the protests as they gathered momentum, particularly on Instagram.The Wire has also reported how in the aftermath of the youth protests, especially after July 20, when Delhi Police violently resisted the protesters, the Modi government has issued a wave of orders for online content to be taken down by the multiple agencies and government departments that have been empowered to go after the media. Meta-owned Instagram has especially come under scrutiny after the regime has realised how badly they are getting pummelled by Gen Z, Y and X in this space.Per the Express report, too, of the three platforms, Instagram accounted for the largest share of these government directions during March-July, receiving nearly 1 lakh blocking orders during the five-month period, more than half of the total.Meanwhile, Facebook received around 80,000 orders and YouTube about 15,000.A majority of the blocking orders were issued through the Union home ministry’s Sahyog portal – a platform developed to send such notices – under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, 2000, by various Union and state agencies.The report also pointed out that in order to comply with the new government-mandated three-hour takedown timeline, as opposed to the earlier 24-hour timeline, Meta has integrated its Application Programming Interface, or API, with the Sahyog portal, allowing content flagged through government directions to be automatically taken down from its platforms, without a human requiring to review it.However, these are in addition to those issued by the government under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, which is invoked to issue online censorship directives, though largely limited to offences related to “national security” and “public order”.The Wire, too, has faced multiple restrictions in recent months.In July, Meta removed two of The Wire’s reports from Facebook and Instagram without prior notice, including a video explainer about the US indictment of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.On July 2, Junaid Dar’s report titled “Bollywood is Mocking Our Suffering, Say Kashmir’s Pellet Survivors On ‘Chauhaan‘ Trailer Dialogue” was also taken down from Facebook and Instagram. A Hindi translated version of Dar’s report, however, is still available on Instagram.Posts by Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) members and other protestors faced similar erasure from Instagram at a chilling pace, following meetings between the company’s leadership and the Union government. Fact-checker and co-founder of AltNews.in, Mohammed Zubair and political content creator Shrishti Khanna had also alleged that their posts saw takedowns and suspensions.The Indian Youth Congress, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das, and the news portal Scroll.in and The Hindu are among others whose posts had been blocked in India.As recent as August, Instagram again withheld The Wire‘s post sharing its article on how the Nah Welfare Society alleged that the Chinese Army has been encroaching on Indian territory near the Taksing village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district.Facebook and Instagram also withheld The Wire‘s posts on Nikhil Gupta’s sentencing hearing in a US federal court being postponed because the man he allegedly conspired to have killed, Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, has requested to be present in the hearing.In March, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) proposed a series of amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. This included expanding the Union government’s control over online content, particularly news and current affairs, by bringing its oversight mechanism onto intermediaries as well as users who are not “publishers” but post or share news and current affairs content online.