Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own account was briefly caught in the net. In July 2026, one of his Gen-Z selfie videos addressing student protesters was temporarily restricted on Facebook. Meta later said the video was “removed in error” and restored it, but the incident was serious enough for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to summon Meta’s global policy leadership for an explanation.
This episode occurred against a much larger pattern: the Indian government has issued large volumes of content-blocking orders to Instagram, leading to restrictions on accounts and videos, especially around protests and criticism related to the SIR process and earlier student agitations.
Scale of the takedowns
Between March and July 2026, government agencies issued nearly 1.95 lakh (195,000) blocking orders to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Instagram alone received close to 1 lakh of them. This averaged about 1,275 orders per day (roughly one every 68 seconds). One order can cover multiple posts, videos, or accounts.
A considerable share of these came during the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) / student protests over NEET paper leaks and related public-order issues. More recently (October 2026), CJP leaders such as Abhijeet Dipke and Ashutosh Ranka have claimed that thousands of Instagram accounts have been restricted in India and lakhs of videos taken down, particularly content critical of the government, SIR, the Election Commission, or protest footage. These figures are activist claims and have not been independently verified at that exact scale, but they align with the documented surge in formal orders.
How the targeting / takedown process works
- Legal basis
Orders are issued mainly under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act and the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. These allow the government to direct platforms to block or restrict content that is deemed a threat to public order, sovereignty, security, etc. - How requests are sent
Central and state agencies use the Union Home Ministry’s Sahyog portal (or direct notices) to send blocking directions to Meta (Instagram’s parent). Platforms are required to comply quickly. Users often see a message such as “Withheld in response to a legal request” or that the content was restricted under the IT Rules via an automated or legal process. - What gets targeted
Reported categories include:- Protest footage, police-action videos, and coverage of anti-SIR / anti-CEC demonstrations
- Satirical or critical reels about Prime Minister Modi
- Posts by journalists, independent creators, opposition-linked accounts, and media outlets
- Some explanatory or news content about the Election Commission’s affidavit or voter-list issues
- Platform response
Instagram/Meta typically geo-restricts the content inside India (it may remain visible outside the country). Some accounts have been temporarily or fully restricted. Meta has occasionally described actions as automated compliance with legal requirements. The brief restriction of Modi’s own Gen-Z video is the clearest example of how far the system can reach—even content from the Prime Minister’s account was not immune.
Context
This activity intensified around the 2026 student protests and has continued into the current SIR-related agitation that is building toward the INDIA bloc’s 1 November Ramlila Maidan rally. Critics (opposition parties, CJP, digital-rights groups such as the Internet Freedom Foundation, and creators) describe it as a broad crackdown on dissent and protest coverage. The government frames the orders as lawful action against content that threatens public order or spreads misinformation.
In short: the mechanism is formal legal blocking orders under the IT Act and IT Rules, issued at high volume (especially to Instagram) through government portals, resulting in geo-restrictions and account/video takedowns of protest, satire, and critical political content—content that, in at least one documented case, included a video posted by the Prime Minister himself.