I&B Ministry
CAS continues to stump I&B ministry
NEW DELHI: India’s federal government is still in a spot over the implementation, rather non-implementation, of the conditional access system (CAS) in the cities of Mumbai and Kolkata – with both the metros steadfastly refusing to toe the official line on rollout from 1 September.
A senior information and broadcasting ministry official today admitted that Mumbai is too hot for the ministry to handle and a “political decision would have to be taken” by the senior most ministers in the government.
Pointing out that the the 7 September address to the cable ops of Mumbai by Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray would be nothing but a “clarion call for revolt” (against CAS), the ministry official said: “In the wake of such unofficial boycott, a political decision has to be taken by the prime minister or the deputy prime minister in consultation with the I&B minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.”
But that can only happen when Prasad, along with I&B ministry secretary Pawan Chopra, returns from Venice after soaking in some sun, movies (the film festival is on there) and, possibly, some bilateral agreements related to the film industry and entertainment content.
The Left-oriented West Bengal government, too, is no mood to relent. In one of its missives to the I&B ministry, the state government has said that the centre should call a meeting of all the states where CAS is being sought to be implemented. It has also been learnt that Kolkata has said that it would watch the Delhi scene very closely before taking a decision on CAS — to go ahead with it or abandon it.
This too has to wait the I&B minister’s return.
Meanwhile, the feedback that the ministry has got from Chennai, where CAS was rolled out in a limited way earlier this month, is that “people are saying they were better off without CAS.”
Some broadcasters too are realising that they may have got away lightly with other metros, but in Chennai the set-top boxes are moving too slowly and confusion reigns. “Our feedback is that about 5,000 boxes have been sold/rented over the last few days. But when you juxtapose this number against the cable subscriber base of over 1 million, the number of boxes out there looks ridiculously low,” a senior executive of a pay channel said
today after returning from Chennai.
One hopes that a rejuvenated Prasad will come back from Venice and sort out the various controversies that have plagued the scheduled rollout of CAS in the country.
Meanwhile, Mumbai-based lawyers are of the opinion that the central government’s dithering over the decision to postpone CAS (conditional access system) rollout in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata can be challenged in court.
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.
