‘Disturbing public order’ accounts for 50% of MHA’s takedown notices to X: report
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New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to X Corp has issued 91 takedown notices alongside red-flagging over 1,100 URLs since the Centre launched the Sahyog portal in March 2024 as a tool to tackle cybercrime in the country, The Indian Express reported.
The outlet revealed, citing records, that 566 of the URLs were flagged for the offence of what the report said ‘disturbing public order’ while 124 were for ‘targeting political and public figures’.
The notices from March 20, 2024 to November 7, 2025 that the MHA filed before Delhi High Court this month point to the fact the Centre issued 58 takedown notices to social media platform X last year.
They reportedly include 24 notices regarding provisions related to ‘violating public tranquility and promoting enmity’, alongside there others in 2024 flagged them for ‘threats to national integrity and sovereignty’.
Of the 91 notices issued over the 20 months, only 14 were about alleged criminal activity such as promotion of betting apps, impersonation of official handles intending financial fraud, and circulating child sexual abuse material.
A single notice issued on May 13, 2024 targeted most number of URLs (115) for allegedly doctored video ‘spreading misinformation with the intention to influence ongoing electoral processes’.
During Lok Sabha polls in April and May, 2024, the government issued takedown notices to X flagging a total of 761 URLs with nine of them flagging 198 URLs for ‘violation of provisions of the Representation of People’s Act’.
The Ministry in an affidavit filed before the Delhi Court through its Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) claimed that X Corp has been ‘objecting the unlawful content raised in the notices and authority to notify for removal of such content under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act’.
Meanwhile, challenging the Sahyog portal’s legitimacy before the Karnataka High Court, X Corp maintained that takedown or blocking orders have to be issued under Section 69A of the IT Act, because it is commonly used for issuing online censorship directives.
However it was ‘limited to national security and public order-related offences’, according to the report.