X Corp v. Union of India: the Sahyog Portal and Section 79(3)(b)

The facts in brief

X Corp — the platform formerly known as Twitter — challenged the constitutional validity of the Union Government's "Sahyog Portal", the mechanism through which notices are issued to intermediaries for the removal of unlawful online content. The portal operationalises, at scale, the coordination between government agencies and platforms over takedowns. X Corp sought declarations that Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act 2000 confers no power to issue blocking orders, and that Rule 3(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 is ultra vires the parent Act.

The challenge was heard by Justice M. Nagaprasanna as a Single Judge, in Writ Petition No. 7405 of 2025 (GM-RES). The judgment, running to several hundred pages, was pronounced on 24 September 2025 and the petition was dismissed in its entirety. X Corp publicly announced that it would carry the matter in intra-court appeal; a Division Bench has since issued notice to the Centre — a post-decision development that forms no part of the single judge's ratio.

This is a distinct matter from the earlier Karnataka High Court litigation in which the same petitioner challenged blocking orders under Section 69A. The present case is about the Sahyog Portal and the Section 79(3)(b) route, and the two should not be conflated.

The constitutional question

The decisive question was the source of authority for content-blocking. X Corp's case was that the IT Act provides one designated route to blocking — Section 69A, with the Blocking Rules' procedural safeguards — and that Shreya Singhal had blessed precisely that architecture. On this reading, the Sahyog Portal and Section 79(3)(b) amount to a parallel takedown regime that circumvents the section's committee process and reasoned-order requirement.

The Union's case was that Section 79(3)(b) does different work. It does not create a freestanding blocking power exercised against citizens; it sets the condition on which an intermediary retains its safe-harbour immunity. An intermediary that declines to act on a lawful government notification to take down unlawful material forfeits the protection of Section 79. The Sahyog Portal, on this view, is a coordination mechanism that operationalises the intermediary's pre-existing due-diligence and takedown obligations under Section 79(3)(b) read with Rule 3(1)(d) — not a substitute for Section 69A.

What the Court held

Section 79(3)(b) is a standalone authority

The Court held that Section 79(3)(b) is itself an independent source of authority for the issuance of information-blocking notices, rejecting the argument that only Section 69A permits such orders. The provision conditions an intermediary's safe harbour on compliance with a government or agency notification to remove unlawful material; that conditionality, the Court reasoned, is the lever that animates the Sahyog mechanism. The Court treated Section 79(3)(b), read with Rule 3(1)(d) of the 2021 Rules, as constitutionally grounded.

Shreya Singhal does not occupy the field

Shreya Singhal was distinguished as having addressed a different controversy — the now-struck Section 66A and the Section 69A blocking architecture. The Court held that the reasoning in Shreya Singhal could not be "transposed by judicial alchemy" to the Section 79(3)(b) and Sahyog context, observing that judicial thought on the regulation of online speech had continued to evolve, even in American First-Amendment jurisprudence after Reno v. ACLU. The result is a narrowing read of Shreya Singhal — confining it to its Section 66A and Section 69A setting — that the intra-court appeal is expected to test.

The portal as an instrument of public good

The Sahyog Portal was upheld as "an instrument of public good", constitutionally anchored in Section 79(3)(b) read with Rule 3(1)(d). On the facts, the Court noted X Corp's own compliance posture — the platform had complied with a substantial share of the takedown requests routed through the portal. The Court also engaged the standing of a foreign corporation to invoke Article 19(1)(a) free-speech protections, since the petitioner was a non-citizen platform asserting speech claims.

The doctrinal architecture

The judgment makes a single, consequential move: it reads Section 79(3)(b) as an independent takedown and blocking authority, distinct from and not subsumed by Section 69A. That reading materially widens the State's content-regulation toolkit. Where Shreya Singhal had read Section 79's "actual knowledge" trigger down to require a court order or a government notification, the present judgment treats the government-notification limb as a live and self-standing source of authority that the Sahyog Portal lawfully operationalises.

The reasoning rests on the conditional nature of intermediary safe harbour. Section 79 immunity is not unconditional; it is forfeited where the intermediary fails to comply with a lawful takedown notification. By treating that forfeiture mechanism as the engine of the Sahyog scheme, the Court frames the portal not as a new coercive power over speech but as the administrative face of an obligation the intermediary already bore. Whether that framing survives appeal is the central question the matter now raises, because the practical effect — content removed at government instance outside the Section 69A committee process — is exactly the territory Shreya Singhal policed.

The judgment also squarely engages a question Shreya Singhal left untouched: the standing of extraterritorial intermediaries to assert constitutional speech protections. By entertaining and then rejecting X Corp's Article 19(1)(a) claim on the merits rather than on a threshold standing bar, the Court treats foreign platforms as participants in the Indian constitutional conversation about online speech — while insisting that no platform is exempt from Indian law.

The Court's invocation of comparative material does additional work in the reasoning. By pointing to the evolution of First-Amendment thought in the United States after Reno v. ACLU, the judgment resists the idea that the constitutional treatment of online speech was settled once and for all by an earlier decision. The implication is that the regulatory environment for intermediaries has changed — in the volume of content, in the speed of dissemination, and in the recognised harms of unlawful material online — and that doctrine framed for an earlier moment cannot be applied mechanically to a later one. Whether that reading respects or overreaches the binding force of Shreya Singhal is, of course, exactly what the appellate courts will have to decide; but as a matter of method, the Court signals that it regards the field as one in which the law is still developing rather than fixed.

It is worth being precise about what the judgment does and does not characterise Section 79(3)(b) as doing. The Court does not treat the provision as creating a new coercive power exercised directly against citizens in the manner of Section 69A; it treats it as setting the condition on which an intermediary keeps its statutory immunity. The distinction is doctrinally significant, because it allows the Court to say that the Sahyog Portal does not bypass Section 69A so much as operationalise a different, pre-existing obligation. The contested question — and the reason the matter is destined for higher scrutiny — is whether that characterisation can hold when the practical effect of the regime is that content is removed at the government's instance outside the safeguards Shreya Singhal attached to the Section 69A route.

What the judgment did not finally settle

Because the single-judge decision is under intra-court appeal, none of its central holdings is settled. The Division Bench will revisit the scope of Section 79(3)(b), the legal status of the Sahyog Portal, the boundary of Shreya Singhal, and the constitutional standing of foreign intermediaries. The Section 69A-versus-Section 79(3)(b) question is one of national importance and is a strong candidate to reach the Supreme Court, whichever way the Division Bench rules.

Pending appeal, the judgment stands as the leading High Court authority validating the Sahyog mechanism, and it will shape takedown compliance practice across platforms in the interim. But its narrowing of Shreya Singhal — and its expansion of Section 79(3)(b) into an affirmative blocking authority — are precisely the propositions that the appellate courts have yet to confirm.

After the judgment

The immediate consequence is operational. With the portal upheld at first instance, intermediaries operating in India confront a content-moderation environment in which government-channelled takedown notifications carry the weight the Court ascribed to them, and non-compliance risks the loss of safe-harbour immunity. The judgment thus has practical force well before the appeal is decided.

The longer arc returns to the question that has run through Indian online-speech law since Shreya Singhal: how far government-channelled content moderation can travel before it reconstitutes the private-complaint-driven, safeguard-light takedown structure that the Supreme Court refused to endorse. The Sahyog litigation is the current frontier of that question, and its resolution on appeal will determine whether Section 79(3)(b) becomes a settled second route to blocking or is folded back into the Section 69A architecture.

Related on Valkya

• X Corp v. Union of India: the Section 69A blocking challenge
• Shreya Singhal v. Union of India: striking down Section 66A
• Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India: internet as an Article 19 right

Sources

1. Verdictum — X Corp v. Union of India (Sahyog Portal constitutionality) case report: https://www.verdictum.in/court-updates/high-courts/karnataka-high-court/x-corp-v-union-of-india-sahyog-portal-constitutionality-information-technology-act-1592928
2. BarandBench — Karnataka High Court dismisses X Corp's challenge to the Sahyog Portal: https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/social-media-needs-to-be-regulated-karnataka-high-court-dismisses-x-corps-challenge-to-sahyog-portal
3. LiveLaw — X Corp says it will appeal the Karnataka High Court judgment upholding the Sahyog Portal: https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/to-defend-free-expression-x-corp-says-itll-appeal-against-karnataka-high-court-judgment-upholding-centres-sahyog-portal-305452
4. BarandBench — "Complied with 91% of 29,118 takedown requests": X Corp to Karnataka High Court: https://www.barandbench.com/news/litigation/complied-with-91-of-29118-takedown-requests-x-corp-to-karnataka-high-court-in-sahyog-portal-challenge