A Delhi High Court vacation bench dismissed Telegram's challenge to a temporary, nationwide block imposed ahead of the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination. Justice Tejas Karia held that Section 69A of the IT Act lets the Centre block an entire intermediary platform — not merely individual URLs or content — and that the emergency block cleared the proportionality test as the least restrictive measure available.
On 24 September 2025, the Karnataka High Court upheld the Centre's Sahyog Portal, holding that Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act is a standalone source of authority for information-blocking notices and that Shreya Singhal does not occupy the field.
On 29 May 2026, Justice Sachin Datta of the Delhi High Court delivered a 144-page judgment recognising the Right to be Forgotten as an integral facet of informational privacy under Article 21 and laying down a workable framework for de-indexing judicial records.
On 14 August 2021, a Bombay High Court division bench stayed Rules 9(1) and 9(3) of the IT Rules 2021 pan-India — holding that the Code of Ethics for digital news media travels beyond the rule-making power conferred by the IT Act and chills Article 19(1)(a) speech.
The May-June 2026 cycle in Indian cyber and data-protection practice is dominated by the DPDP Rules 2025 first-year operationalisation, the transitional jurisprudence under Section 43A of the IT Act 2000 in its final operative phase, and the continuing post-Kunal Kamra recalibration of the intermediary-liability framework. A focused round-up of what changed in policy, what changed in the courts, and what practitioners are tracking.
On 12 April 2021, a single judge of the Delhi High Court granted interim de-indexing of news reports of a prosecution that had ended in acquittal, applying the right to be forgotten under Article 21.
On 23 September 2024, the Supreme Court held that viewing and storing child sexual exploitative material is punishable under s.15 POCSO and s.67B IT Act, and replaced 'child pornography' with 'CSEAM'.
A 2016 Delhi High Court division bench refused to read constitutional restraints into a click-wrap consent transaction but moulded transitional relief — and the case has been pending before a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ever since.
A Bombay High Court division bench split 1-1 in January 2024 on the constitutional validity of the IT Rules 2023 Fact Check Unit. The tie-breaking opinion of Justice A.S. Chandurkar in September 2024 struck down Rule 3(1)(b)(v) — vague, overbroad, and structurally inviting the state to be judge in its own cause.
On 13 December 2017, a three-judge bench ordered search engines to auto-block pre-natal sex-determination advertisements, recalibrating the Shreya Singhal intermediary safe-harbour for PCPNDT enforcement.
On 24 March 2015, a two-judge bench struck down Section 66A of the IT Act as unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, reshaping India's online-speech and intermediary-liability law.
On 23 November 2020, the Orissa High Court refused bail and articulated India's first judicial recognition of the right to be forgotten for survivors of sexual offences.
On 30 June 2023, a single bench of the Karnataka High Court dismissed Twitter's challenge to MeitY blocking orders covering 39 URLs and 1,474 accounts — and imposed exemplary costs of fifty lakh rupees. Section 69A, the court held, authorises account-level blocking; foreign intermediaries have only limited Article 19 standing; and selective compliance attracts deterrent costs.
On 2 November 2018, Pratibha M. Singh, J. of the Delhi High Court held that the luxury reseller darveys.com was not a passive intermediary under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act 2000 and could not claim the safe-harbour against trade-mark infringement. The judgment enumerated some twenty-six indicia of active involvement — paid membership, curated marketplace, control over which sellers could list, authenticity guarantees, logistics handling, non-disclosure of seller identities and use of the Louboutin name and Mr. Louboutin's image as meta-tags. A close reading of the active-versus-passive intermediary test under Section 79 read with Rule 3 of the Intermediary Guidelines Rules 2011, the post-judgment doctrinal arc through Amazon Seller v. Modicare and the Division Bench gloss on Amway v. 1MG.
On 23 December 2016 a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in MySpace Inc v. Super Cassettes Industries Ltd, set aside Justice Manmohan Singh's blanket 2011 injunction and worked out the first coherent Indian framework for intermediary safe-harbour in copyright. The DB held that the proviso to Section 81 of the IT Act does not preclude an intermediary from invoking the Section 79 safe-harbour in copyright suits; that 'actual knowledge' under Section 51(a)(ii) of the Copyright Act requires knowledge of specific infringing material at a specific URL; that takedown notices must identify works with specificity, location and ownership; and that no general proactive monitoring obligation can be imposed.