Why 65 Blackouts Nonetheless Make It the ‘Highest Amongst Democracies’
3 min learnApr 1, 2026 12:54 PM IST
India imposed 65 web shutdowns in 2025, the bottom quantity recorded within the nation since 2017. Nonetheless, the determine stays “alarmingly excessive for a democracy”, in line with a brand new report launched by the worldwide digital rights advocacy group, Entry Now.
The report, titled ‘Rising Repression Meets World Resistance: Web Shutdowns in 2025’, paperwork 313 deliberate web blackouts throughout 52 international locations final 12 months – the best ever recorded by Entry Now because it started compiling such knowledge in 2016. Whereas Myanmar overtook India because the world’s main perpetrator for the second consecutive 12 months with 95 incidents, India’s historic tally stays the best globally. Out of the two,102 web shutdowns recorded by Entry Now worldwide since 2016, 920 have occurred in India.
Information compiled by the organisation exhibits a fluctuating however constantly excessive development of community disruptions in India over the previous decade. India noticed 30 shutdowns in 2016, which greater than doubled to 69 in 2017. The numbers peaked at 134 in 2018, adopted by 121 in 2019, 108 every in 2020 and 2021, 85 in 2022, 116 in 2023 and 84 in 2024, earlier than dropping to 65 in 2025.
In response to the report, the 65 shutdowns in 2025 impacted 12 states and territories throughout India. These disruptions have been primarily deployed throughout “protests, battle, communal violence, and spiritual holidays.”
The report factors out that India an exception globally as a result of “shutdown orders should technically be printed by regulation.” Regardless of this procedural requirement, Entry Now mentioned that India “continues to decide on management over folks’s voices, missing the popularity that shutdowns are essentially incompatible with democracy.”
The report additionally highlights a rising development of authorities concentrating on circumvention instruments, akin to Digital Non-public Networks. VPNs are software program functions that enable customers to bypass native web restrictions by masking their on-line identification and placement.
The report notes that on December 29, 2025, Jammu and Kashmir invoked Part 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita – a provision utilized by magistrates to concern prohibitory orders to keep up public tranquillity – to impose a “two-month ban on unauthorized VPN use”. Following this order, the police reportedly penalised round 800 customers, a crackdown that included “cellphone searches for banned functions.”
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Globally, the Asia Pacific area accounted for almost all of those disruptions, with 195 shutdowns throughout 11 international locations. Entry Now mentioned that the area’s democracies “proceed to depend on shutdowns as a default response to unrest.” It cites Pakistan’s 20 shutdowns as one other instance of the “regular normalization of reducing connectivity throughout protests, non secular occasions, and politically delicate moments, usually with little transparency or accountability.”
The report, printed by Entry Now on behalf of a coalition of over 366 organisations from 106 international locations, concluded that the usage of web shutdowns to say management and conceal human rights violations is inflicting deep, preventable hurt. The coalition urged governments worldwide to recognise that these “deliberate disruptions mustn’t ever be normalized”.
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