I&B Ministry
I&B ministry readies for a new head in Ravi Shankar Prasad?
MUMBAI: Last night it was well-informed speculation. Today it is as good as confirmed. Though the official announcement is still to be made, information & broadcasting ministry sources say the next head of Shastri Bhavan will almost certainly be the present minister of state for coal & mines with additional charge of law & justice Ravi Shankar Prasad.
As reported earlier on indiantelevision.com, I&B minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to have a change of portfolio to parliamentary affairs. The new information on this front is that she will also be getting additional charge of the health portfolio which is being taken away from cine star Shatrugan Sinha.
Prasad, who is articulate and a familiar face on news channels, where he speaks for the BJP during political debates, is expected to get independent charge of the I&B ministry.
Prasad, who is the brother-in-law of journalist turned Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Shukla, is the elder brother of Anuradha Prasad, who heads BAG Films. Anuradha Prasad’s production house delivers software to both Star India and Doordarshan,
With Swaraj out of I&B, it will be left to Prasad to oversee the rollout of conditional access systems in the broadcast sector, an area in which she showed a deep focus interest. The question that arises is whether Prasad will show the zeal that Swaraj showed in the matter, especially since the notification for the implementation of CAS in the four metros of Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai has already been issued. The deadline has been set as 15 July.
The I&B ministry is still to announce what will be the cost of the basic tier of free to air channels under CAS as too how many channels will be included in it. That may well be among the first issues that Prasad takes up as an A priority. Then there is also the pending issue of Star India’s application for an uplinking licence for its Star News channel. Prasad will certainly have enough on his plate from Day 1.
Meanwhile, The information technology and communications ministry, earlier under Pramod Mahajan, is reportedly shifting to disinvestment minister Arun Shourie who will hold additional charge of that portfolio.
Mahajan, who resigned from his cabinet post as information technology, communications and parliamentary affairs minister last night, will take charge as party general secretary.
While this had been reported last night by indiantelevision.com, Arun Jaitley, with whom he swaps places as BJP general secretary, will be heading the law and commerce ministries and not Mahajan’s earlier portfolios. This will be Jaitley’s second stint in the law ministry.
See related story:
Mahajan, Jaitley trade places; Swaraj may move to parliamentary affairs
I&B Ministry
India turns up the heat on piracy, orders Telegram to axe 3,142 channels and blocks 800 websites
New legal teeth, nodal officers and notices to intermediaries signal that the government is done playing nice with copyright thieves
NEW DELHI: India’s war on film piracy just got significantly more aggressive. The government has ordered Telegram to remove 3,142 channels distributing pirated content, blocked access to around 800 websites through internet service providers, and put the full weight of freshly sharpened legislation behind the crackdown. The message from New Delhi is unambiguous: the free ride for copyright thieves is over.
Minister of state for information and broadcasting L. Murugan spelled out the legal architecture to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. The Cinematograph (Amendment) Act, 2023, he said, now contains specific provisions designed to make piracy a genuinely painful proposition. Sections 6AA and 6AB prohibit unauthorised recording and transmission of films, with violations attracting a minimum of three months’ imprisonment and a fine of Rs 3 lakh. At the upper end, offenders face three years behind bars and fines of up to 5 per cent of a film’s audited gross production cost — a figure that, for a big-budget production, could run into crores.
The legislation also gives the government powers to act against intermediaries hosting infringing content, by notifying them under Section 79(3) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and compelling takedowns and blocking actions. Under Section 79(3)(b), intermediaries are legally required to remove or disable access to unlawful content upon receiving government notice or court orders. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, add a further layer of obligation, requiring platforms to ensure their services are not used to host or distribute content that violates copyright or proprietary rights.
To put enforcement into practice, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has established a dedicated institutional mechanism, complete with nodal officers to receive complaints. Copyright holders, authorised representatives or individuals can report piracy through a prescribed format, after which the government issues notices to intermediaries to disable access to infringing links.
The most headline-grabbing action came on 11 March 2026, when Telegram was formally notified under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act and directed to remove and disable 3,142 channels found to be distributing unauthorised content belonging to OTT platforms, content owners and producers. The complaints that triggered the action came from OTT platforms including JioCinema and Amazon Prime Video, which alleged that copyrighted films, web series and other material were being shared on the platform on a massive scale. Telegram’s architecture, with its large file-sharing limits and capacity for user anonymity, has made it a favoured vehicle for exactly this kind of large-scale piracy.
The Telegram action sits within a broader pattern of escalating enforcement. Just days before the Lok Sabha statement, the ministry banned five OTT platforms for streaming obscene content: MoodXVIP, Koyal Playpro, Digi Movieplex, Feel and Jugnu. In July 2025, the Centre ordered the blocking of 25 OTT platforms accused of streaming obscene, vulgar or pornographic material, a list that included ALTT, ULLU, Big Shots App, Desiflix, Boomex, Navarasa Lite, Gulab App, Kangan App, Bull App, Jalva App, ShowHit, Wow Entertainment, Look Entertainment, Hitprime, Feneo, ShowX, Sol Talkies, Adda TV, HotX VIP, Hulchul App, MoodX, NeonX VIP, Fugi, Mojflix and Triflicks.
Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, provides the regulatory hook for those actions, prohibiting platforms from hosting content that is obscene, pornographic, invasive of privacy, gender-harassing, racially or ethnically objectionable, or that promotes hatred and violence.
For an industry that loses billions of rupees annually to piracy, the direction of travel is welcome. The question, as always, is not whether the laws exist, but whether the enforcement machinery can keep pace with the ingenuity of those determined to circumvent it. Three thousand channels down, and the pirates are already busy opening three thousand more.
