The Telecom Bill’s internet shutdown switch: A road to excessive delegation?

Year after year, India continues to retain its position of the internet shutdown capital of the world. Internet shutdowns are broadly understood as the disruption of broadband or mobile-based internet access in a given geographic area as a result of a government directive. While these shutdowns are put in place to address some ‘harm’ that is facilitated by the internet, there is no rulebook in place for instances in which they can be ordered. Moreover, these measures fail to discriminate between innocuous and allegedly harmful uses of the internet. To top it all off, such shutdowns are ordered not by the legislature, but by the executive.