I&B Ministry
100 days of the I&B Ministry
NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi led NDA government has completed 100 successful days in power. And in these days, the Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has done its bit to woo the Media and Entertainment industry.
Listing the achievements was I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar, through a press meet in Delhi.
The government is launching a new 24×7 channel for the northeast called Arun Prabha in order to provide a strong platform for expression of cultural identities and for creating greater awareness regarding the region.
Even as a Task Force has been constituted to steer the remaining two phases i.e. phase III and phase IV of digitisation in India, the government has made efforts towards fulfilling the long pending demand of domestic manufacturers of Set Top Boxes to get tax concession (C Form benefit) in order to compete with imported STBs.
He said this will pave the way for implementation of digitisation initiative in India and see digitisation of about 80 million Cable TV homes in India. It is also a step towards the Prime Minister’s dream of a Digital India as digitisation will enable quick penetration of broadband connectivity in India.
The Minister talked of initiatives taken in different sectors aimed at enhancing the outreach of policies and programmes across platforms. Some of the initiatives undertaken have been innovative involving people’s participation, enhancing government’s presence on the social media platforms and strengthening communication at the grassroots.
He said Rs 100 crore had been allocated to Kisan Channel, which will disseminate real time information to the farmers regarding new farming techniques, water conservation, organic farming etc.
In order to facilitate Ministries/Departments in registering their presence on social media the Ministry had organised a half day training workshop on 11 July.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has on the request of the Ministry given recommendations on migration of FM Radio Broadcasters from phase-II to phase-III which is under examination.
Goa has been declared the permanent destination for the International Films Festival of India to develop the “Brand IFFI” on the lines of other International Film Festivals. Although the decision to move IFFI to Goa was taken in 2004 when the National Democratic Alliance was in power, a fresh Memorandum of Understanding was being signed year-to-year for the Festival.
The three-day North East Film Festival held in Delhi recently will henceforth be an annual feature organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals.
The Film and Television Institute of India and the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute are to be institutes of National Importance and an Act of Parliament will be passed for this. The proposed Bill would enable both the Institutes to award its own degrees and diplomas and start new activities on the lines of IITs and IIMs.
The office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) has streamlined its Single Window Public dealing mechanism at its office. RNI has achieved 100 per cent success in online e-filing of annual statements by publishers for 2013-14.
Under the Rs 100 crore set aside for “Supporting Community Radio Movement in India,” 600 community radio stations will be set up across the country in the 12th Five Year Plan. This major initiative of the new government will strengthen the link with the population living in rural and marginalized areas.
The Home Ministry has agreed to the proposal of the Ministry for not seeking security clearance for such channels whose security clearance have already been sought earlier along with the Board of Directors. This decision has paved the way for speedy clearance of additional television channel permissions, which will benefit the broadcast industry in a big way. After the decision was taken, 23 TV channels have already been permitted by the Ministry.
The proposal has been cleared for Rs.600 crore National Film Heritage Mission (NFHM) to preserve India’s film legacy by the Expenditure Finance Committee in the Finance Ministry. The draft Cabinet Note has been circulated to the concerned Ministries and the Note will shortly be submitted for approval of the Cabinet.
To ensure people’s participation in Government Advertising through Crowd-Sourcing of Advertisements, the advertisement for important events are to be designed by the people. The Independence Day advertisement designed on these lines and DAVP has invited suggestions for the proposed advertisement to be brought out on 5 September to observe “Teachers Day”.
For Independence Day, the advertisements were crowd sourced for the first time and Independence Day coverage was extended to all media platforms. Similarly, a series of press conferences being organised to highlight the initiatives of the Government and the same approach is being adopted to ensure information dissemination across all platforms.
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.
