This order does not strike down any statute, rule, or age-restriction scheme; it rejects, in principle, blanket denial of internet access to children in the name of safety. The operative directions are implementation measures to be overseen by the Union of India and reported by affidavit — compliance is still to come, and the matter is listed for 10 December 2026.
- Case
- Just Rights for Children Alliance & Anr. v. S. Harish & Ors.
- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Decision
- Citation
- 2026 INSC 1149
- Bench
- J.B. Pardiwala; K. Vinod Chandran
- Judgment by
- J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran (signed by both)
- Case numbers
- M.A. Nos. 2553-2554 of 2026 in Crl.A. Nos. 2161-2162 of 2024
- Outcome
- Reportable order in miscellaneous applications implementing the 23.09.2024 directions; lays down the fundamental-right holding and issues implementation directions monitored by affidavit. Next hearing 10 December 2026.
The holding, in one line
The Supreme Court has declared that the right to access and use the internet is a fundamental right of every individual under Article 21 read with Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, and that children, irrespective of their age, enjoy the same rights. Blanket bans on children’s access in the name of safety were rejected as ‘nothing more than unproven measures of proven disproportionality’.
The holding came in a reportable order in miscellaneous applications filed by the Just Rights for Children Alliance, which had sought effective implementation of the Court’s September 2024 directions on removing child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) from online platforms. A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran delivered the order on 15 October 2026 (2026 INSC 1149).
How the case got here
The applications arose out of the Court’s judgment of 23 September 2024 in Just Rights for Children Alliance & Anr. v. S. Harish & Ors. (2024 INSC 716), which dealt with the circulation of CSEAM on social media platforms and flagged intermediaries’ failure to report such material to the Special Juvenile Police Units as the POCSO Act and its Rules require.
In its order of 14 August 2026 the Bench had expressed concern over serious lapses by intermediaries in complying with those directions — including the promotion of indirect links to harmful material through social media algorithms to bypass Section 15 of the POCSO Act and Section 67B of the IT Act — and over a news report showing links to view child pornography being sold for Rs 40 to Rs 5,000, with sellers sharing links rather than downloads to evade the penal provisions, which criminalised only storage.
A further report placed before the Court by the applicants — prepared by the Tech Transparency Project — revealed that despite reporting, review mechanisms of an intermediary held some flagged material as not falling foul of its ‘standards’, allowing it to keep circulating: a finding the Court called a matter of grave concern requiring a revisit of those standards.
The question the Court examined
In the course of the proceedings the Bench gave ‘anxious consideration’ to a growing tendency across the globe to limit the access of children below a certain age to the internet, more particularly social media, in the name of their safety — and consciously decided not to endorse it, while stressing that it did not doubt the bona fides of those who propose such measures, and that the very necessity of the proceedings proved the internet is far from safe for children.
The constitutional reasoning
The Court reasoned that freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) has never been confined to the right to speak alone; it has always included the right to know and to receive and impart information and ideas, citing Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting v. Cricket Association of Bengal. The internet, it said, is ‘without a doubt, the marketplace of ideas, creative expression and information’, whose value lies in the access it affords, to adults and children alike.
In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) a three-Judge Bench had left open whether the right to access the internet is by itself a fundamental right, but the Court held the issue is now no longer res-integra. It relied on Pragya Prasun v. Union of India (2025 INSC 599), where digital access was held to be an intrinsic component of the right to life under Article 21, with the State obliged to design inclusive digital ecosystems.
On that foundation the Bench concluded: ‘we have no hesitation in saying that the right to access and use the internet is a fundamental right of every individual under Article 21 read with Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Our children, irrespective of their age enjoy the same rights, and to deny the same altogether would be as absurd as saying children below a certain age do not have a conscience worth protecting or a freedom of speech worth expressing. The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both.’
Why blanket restrictions fail the Court's test
The Court gave three interlocking reasons for rejecting wholesale denial of internet access to children. First, the means of achieving age-based restrictions are themselves an overreach: they inevitably require identifying and ascertaining the age of each and every user, continuous collection and monitoring of sensitive data, and a disproportionate risk of misuse and surveillance, which the Court said finds no place within the right to privacy of the people.
Second, other jurisdictions show such measures lack proven efficacy: children do not stop using the internet because the law forbids it; they continue without their parents’ knowledge, migrating to unregulated platforms that are even more unsafe. Third, restrictions make children who are enticed or threatened online reluctant to report incidents out of fear of reprisal for using the internet at all — which would ‘significantly undermine the safety of our children’ and defeat the avowed object of the POCSO Act — while doing nothing to reduce CSEAM circulation itself.
The Court’s framing was sharpest in a single line: ‘To keep the child away from the internet on account of such failures would be to mistake the victim for the problem.’ Any measure for the safety of children, it held, must be directed at the harmful material and those responsible for it, and not at the children themselves.
What the order actually directs
The operative part of the order is not a strike-down of any law but a package of implementation directions summarised in paragraph 316. The Union of India must create a National Hash & URL List Database for the sole purpose of detecting and removing CSEAM — entries made only after multi-tier verification ending in independent determination by at least three trained human analysts, and confined to hash identifiers and URLs transmitted through encrypted channels. Intermediaries must immediately disable content matching a known entry, report unknown-origin CSEAM within two hours, and furnish weekly consolidated reports of known-origin removals.
The directions further require the Union to frame guidelines and standard operating procedures for hash-matching and URL-listing tools, amend the IT Rules where necessary, mandate notices in place of removed material, overhaul grievance redressal with dedicated trained officers and 24-hour acknowledgements, impose exemplary monetary fines for defaults, forfeit revenue derived from paywalled CSEAM, and subject paywall and subscription content to rigorous scrutiny so that no child can access obscene or sexually explicit material. MeitY and the Ministry of Law and Justice must oversee implementation and report progress by affidavit on the next hearing date: 10 December 2026.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students
This order is a textbook study in how Article 21 grows. The Court treats the question left open in Anuradha Bhasin as settled by building a chain: speech under Article 19(1)(a) includes the right to receive information; the internet is the principal marketplace for that information; and Pragya Prasun had already located digital access inside the right to life. Notice also the method: the Bench does not simply weigh child safety against child freedom; it rejects the trade-off itself and subjects the restriction to a proportionality-style analysis — unproven efficacy across jurisdictions, massive collateral intrusion through universal age-verification and data collection, and perverse effects (children driven underground, reporting chilled).
Finally, distinguish the two things this order does. The fundamental-right holding is ratio, stated with deliberate finality (‘no longer res-integra’). The paragraphs on hash databases, grievance officers and paywall scrutiny are administrative implementation directions in miscellaneous applications, monitored by affidavit — policy engineering rather than adjudication of rights between parties.
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- What constitutional reasoning does the Court use to conclude that the right to access the internet is a fundamental right, and how does Pragya Prasun fit into that chain?
- Why does the Court hold that blanket age-based restrictions on children's internet access are ineffective and disproportionate?
- Distinguish the ratio of this order (the fundamental-right holding) from its implementation directions on CSEAM databases and intermediaries.
