"No research on social, economic impact of internet outages: Minister."

According to a written statement provided to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday by Union Minister of State for Communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, the central government has not carried out any evaluation to determine the economic and social repercussions of internet shutdowns in India.

The minister declared that when it comes to developing guidelines for internet suspension under the Telecommunications Act of 2023, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is not consulting with researchers, activists, members of civil society, or subject matter experts.

Congress MPs Gaurav Gogoi, Benny Behanan, Sukhdeo Bhagat, and Harish Chandra Meena posed the question that Sekhar was answering.

In response to another question from Congress MP Chavan Vasantrao Balwantrao and BJP MP Sudheer Gupta, the minister stated that neither public nor private operators had expressed a "stiff reservation" regarding the laws that allow the government to take over telecom services for security and public order reasons.

In fact, on June 26th, section 20 of the Telecom Act, 2023 went into force, giving the government the authority to halt telecom services for grounds related to public order, national security, or other related concerns. Its execution is, nevertheless, subject to "procedure and safeguards as may be prescribed" by regulations.

Draft regulations under section 20 have not yet been made available for comment, despite the DoT having produced five sets of draft rules for discussion under various Telecom Act provisions. However, operationalizing section 21, which went into effect on June 26, does not require delegate legislation. Under this section, the government can take over or halt the operations of a telecom service or network for reasons pertaining to national security, friendly relations with other states, or in the event of war.

Additionally, the four Congress MPs requested district-by-district and month-by-month information on internet shutdown orders made between 2018 and 2024 under the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety Rules), 2017 and whether In response, Sekhar restated the government's widely held position, which is that the Department of Technology does not keep track of information about internet suspension orders issued by union territories or state governments because law enforcement and public order are state matters.

The statement stated, "On the MHA website, you can find permissions issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for the temporary suspension of telecom services." On its website, under the heading "Circulars," are the orders that MHA has issued.

The Internet Society, an American nonprofit organization that promotes open access, maintains a Netloss calculator that shows that India's internet outages between January 1 and August 8 of this year cost the country's GDP more than $14 billion.

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