The Government of India on Thursday issued an advisory to all Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms, media streaming services, and digital intermediaries to immediately discontinue the hosting and distribution of content having its origins in Pakistan.
“In light of the Pahalgam terror attack, national security takes precedence. OTT platforms are hereby mandated to remove all content originating from Pakistan,” the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said in a post on X.
The advisory was released following the cross-border escalation following the Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025, which claimed the lives of 25 Indian citizens and one Nepali national.
The directive comes under the purview of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, specifically under Part III that governs the Code of Ethics for online curated content. The government cited Rule 3(1)(b) of Part-II, which obliges intermediaries to ensure that users do not share or disseminate content that threatens India’s unity, integrity, defence, or its relations with foreign states.
The advisory states that “in the interest of national security,” all content – including web series, films, songs, podcasts, and other forms of streaming media – produced in or associated with Pakistan must be taken down immediately, irrespective of the platform’s business model (subscription-based or free-to-air).
The Ministry confirmed that the advisory has been issued with the approval of the competent authority and urged compliance from all digital content providers to uphold the legal and ethical mandates of the IT Rules, 2021.
Digital rights group, Internet Freedom Foundation, called the move “vague forms of censorship” and urged the ministry to withdraw the advisory.
“This offends the Supreme Court’s necessity-and-proportionality tests laid down in Shreya Singhal (2015) and Anuradha Bhasin (2020). Even otherwise, such origin based blocking is not possible or feasible given the technical nature of information where the residency of a server does not correspond to the nationality nor origin. Here, its vaguely worded direction to “discontinue” any material originating in Pakistan may include — potentially everything from an Indian journalist’s interview with a Pakistani commentator to cross-border cultural programming such as joint concerts by Indian artists — and will result in over-compliance and self-censorship by private service providers, gutting the freedom of speech and liberty that sustains our democracy,” IFF said in the statement.
