The Delhi High Court has ordered the restoration of digital news platform 4PM’s YouTube channel but said that its videos -- which the government says are detrimental to India’s national security and public order -- will remain temporarily blocked.
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav said that the office bearers of 4PM will appear before the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) constituted under the Intermediary Rules, which will point out the offending material on their channel.
If the channel’s office bearers seek time to explain/justify the material, they should be granted sufficient time to do the same, the Court said.
“Let YouTube to temporarily block/suspend the alleged objectionable/offending videos on the petitioners’ YouTube Channel, and upon compliance of the same, let the petitioners’ YouTube channel be restored,” the Court ordered.
Justice Kaurav added that IDC’s recommendations related to the order to be passed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) should be supplied to 4PM.
“The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting shall be at liberty to monitor the material posted on the petitioners‟YouTube channel and in case, any further objectionable/offending material is posted, it shall be at liberty to take appropriate recourse in accordance with law,” the Court added.
The Court passed the order while disposing of a plea filed by 4PM and its editor-in-chief Sanjay Sharma against the blocking of their YouTube channel in India.
The channel claimed that it has over 8.4 million subscribers on YouTube and was ranked top for the past three years. They said that their channel and 26 of its videos were blocked in March 2026 and that Google took the action following a legal request by the government. Neither Google nor the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) provided them with any formal order or reasons, the petitioners added.
In an affidavit filed before the Court, the government had said that 4PM was blocked for peddling conspiracy theories alleging involvement of Indian authorities in the Pahalgam terror attack and being part of a digital lobbying mechanism to aid the cause of foreign actors to sway India’s sovereign decision-making.
The government termed the 4PM news platform as an example of digital lobbying to perpetrate “influence operations”.
It said that the nature of the content published on the channel “manifested a consistent degenerative editorial pattern peddling anti-India/anti-Indian Armed Forces/anti-Indian Foreign Policy sentiments across all subjects, time period and formats”.
After considering the case, the Court observed that the channel had uploaded nearly 50,000 videos and only a small fraction, 26 videos, had been found objectionable.
Justice Kaurav said that the matter could be resolved by balancing the equities.
Senior Advocate Akhil Sibal with advocates SM Haider Rizvi, Talha Abdul Rahman, Jahnavi Sindhu, Sudhanshu Tewari, Krishnesh Bapat, Faizan Ahmed and Shuktiz Sinha appeared for 4PM News.
Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma with advocates Rajat Nair, Amit Tiwari, RV Prabhat, Amit Gupta, Shubham Sharma, Yash Wardhan Sharma and Naman represented the Union of India.
[Read Order]