I&B Ministry
Rs 18000 crore worth investments received for ‘Digital India’: Prasad
NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mandate of ‘Digital India’ will be a game changer for the country and will have a cascading effect on the entire system said Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Chairing the consultative committee meeting attached to his Ministry, he informed the members that about 700,000 kilometer of cable for broadband is proposed to be laid in the next three years as against one million kilometers already laid in the country, so far.
The Minister informed members that 50,000 gram panchayats will be provided broadband facility in the first tranche and 2.5 lakh in the next three years. Prasad also assured the members that the government is giving priority to the production of electronic goods as part of the ‘Make in India’ programme.
Reacting to the concern of some of the members about poor services of the BSNL network in the country, he said more funds are proposed to be provided to the public sector telephone service providers during the VII phase to improve their functioning and make them commercially active.
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology secretary RS Sharma, made a presentation on the ‘Digital India’ programme before the members of the consultative committee. Earlier at the FICCI, Prasad said Rs 18000 crore worth investments proposals have been received till now for the ‘Digital India’ programme, of which Rs 4000 crore worth have been approved and more are in the pipeline.
Speaking at the session on ‘The role of ICT and ‘Digital India’ initiative in India’s growth’ at the 87th AGM of FICCI, Prasad said that while there are issues of spectrum to provide high speed connectivity and regulatory control, India will become an exciting place as far as ‘Digital India’ is concerned. E-commerce, he said, was worth billions of dollars and will help increase India’s GDP in a big way.
Prasad said that the huge postal network can be used for various services like banking, insurance etc. The postal services earn Rs 280 crore from e-commerce, he said, and urged the private sector to take the initiative to develop India digitally.
Stating that digital connectivity is needed for good governance, Prasad said India had more than $100 billion turnover in IT industry. All fortune companies connect with India’s IT. India has the potential of becoming number two after China and surpass the United States.
Spelling out the initiatives that have already been taken under the Digital India Programme, the Minister said mygov.in portal has been launched to allow India to interact on various government programmes. Suggestions received on various programmes like ‘Clean Ganga’, ‘Swachh Bharat’ through the portal and designing, logo, slogan etc have been prepared. Under the ‘Jan Dhan Yojna’ – name for the programme was coined with the help of suggestions received through the portal, eight crore bank accounts have been opened till now with a total deposit amount of Rs 8000 crore. This is an ideal example of financial inclusion through digital technology.
Additionally, programmes such as ‘Jeevan Pramaan’, a biometric-enabled digital service for pensioners has been launched. Besides, through IT, two lakh schools were connected (two crore children) on the eve of Teacher’s Day.
Prasad said the digital divide between those who have and those who don’t needs to be plugged. For this the government has initiated the programme – National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) – which proposes to connect seven lakh kilometers optical fiber to be laid to connect 250 gram panchayats in three years. Wi-fi spots will be provided around the clusters after that and all villages to be provided with internet connectivity.
He said that to promote ‘Digital India’ it is proposed to set up a broadband duct which is a pre-requisite for getting sewer, water and electricity connections.
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.
