Explain how fake news and disinformation pose threat to Internal Security and Public Order in Indian context? In this regard, discuss salient features of amendments in respect of Information Technology (Intermediatory Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021.

Why this is a security question

Disinformation is not merely false content. It is a low-cost, deniable instrument that produces physical consequences: it mobilises crowds faster than administration can respond, and by the time a rebuttal is issued the crowd has assembled.

The threat to internal security and public order

• Communal mobilisation. Doctored or miscaptioned video circulating on closed messaging groups has repeatedly preceded riots, with the original content often unrelated to the location it is attributed to.
• Mob violence. Child-lifting rumours produced a wave of lynchings, which is what prompted the traceability and forwarding-limit debate.
• Panic and cascade effects. The 2012 north-east exodus from southern cities, and pandemic-era rumour-driven bank runs and migration.
• Hostile information operations. Coordinated inauthentic networks amplifying separatist and secessionist narratives, particularly around Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east.
• Deepfakes. Synthetic audio and video of public figures, now cheap enough to produce at scale, which compresses the verification window to nothing during an election or a communal flashpoint.
• Erosion of trust. The deeper harm is the "liar's dividend" — once synthetic media is common, genuine evidence can be dismissed as fabricated.

Salient features of the IT Rules, 2021

Framed under Section 87 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, replacing the 2011 Intermediary Guidelines.

• Due diligence for intermediaries, with loss of Section 79 safe harbour for non-compliance.
• Grievance officer based in India, acknowledging complaints in 24 hours and resolving within 15 days.
• Significant Social Media Intermediaries, above a user threshold, must additionally appoint a Chief Compliance Officer, a Nodal Contact Person and a Resident Grievance Officer, and publish monthly compliance reports.
• Traceability of the first originator for significant messaging services, in specified serious offences — the most contested provision.
• Expedited removal: 36 hours from a court or government order; 24 hours for content of a sexual nature.
• Three-tier grievance mechanism for digital media and OTT, with self-regulation, a self-regulatory body under a retired judge, and an inter-departmental oversight committee.
• Code of Ethics and age-based content classification for OTT.

What the amendments changed

• 2022 amendment. Created Grievance Appellate Committees so a user dissatisfied with an intermediary's decision has an appeal outside the platform, and obliged intermediaries to make reasonable efforts to cause users not to post specified unlawful categories.
• 2023 amendment. Extended the Rules to online real-money gaming, and introduced the contested fact-check unit provision for content about the business of the central government — stayed and struck down in litigation on Article 19(1)(a) grounds.
• 2025 and 2026 amendments. Directed at synthetically generated information: obligations to label AI-generated content, user declaration at upload, platform verification, and prominent visible marking, with compressed takedown timelines for deepfakes. Detail in our note on the deepfake and takedown amendments.

The constitutional tension

Every mechanism above is simultaneously a security instrument and a speech restriction. Traceability weakens end-to-end encryption for everyone to identify one originator. Short takedown windows push platforms to over-remove, since the cost of leaving content up exceeds the cost of taking it down. And a government body adjudicating truth about the government is the difficulty the fact-check unit litigation turned on. Restrictions must survive Article 19(2) and the proportionality test, and speed and due process pull in opposite directions here.

Conclusion

Fake news is a genuine public-order threat and the Rules are a genuine attempt to place responsibility on intermediaries. The durable answer is narrower and slower than takedown: provenance labelling, rapid official rebuttal capacity, media literacy, and independent rather than executive adjudication of what is false.