The Instagram account of political cartoonist Satish Acharya has been restricted in India after the Meta-owned platform received a legal request from the government.
He said Instagram had restricted access to it in India.
I am posting the cartoon again, along with the notice I received from Instagram.
Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders.
The Instagram account of political cartoonist Satish Acharya has been restricted in India after the Meta-owned platform received a legal request from the government.
A message displayed by the platform when users try to access the account says: “We reviewed it against our policies and conducted a legal and human rights assessment. After the review, we restricted access to the content in the location where it goes against local law.”
Another political cartoonist, Manjul, also said that Instagram had restricted one of his works about the Election Commission to users in India “pursuant to a notice from the Government of India/Law Enforcement”.
Acharya’s account was blocked under the 2021 Information Technology Rules, which require social media platforms to remove “unlawful content” within three hours of receiving directions from the government or a court.
Among Acharya’s recent works were cartoons on The Indian Express investigation from September 23 that revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to the poll panel’s decisions about the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, saying that some had been taken without their knowledge.
Acharya told Scroll that he had not received any communication from Meta before some of his posts were taken down. He later received a notification saying that his profile would be unavailable in India.
“This regime boasts about being the most powerful and fearless government,” he said. “But every bit of criticism scares this government, forcing it to resort to cowardice measures.”
On Monday, the cartoonist said on X that he had never seen a government that is “so scared of cartoons ”.
I have never seen a govt which is SO SCARED of cartoons! 😀 https://t.co/gbETc5mpUk — Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) September 28, 2026
Acharya also shared a news report from 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that cartoons do not hurt, but have a “healing power”. Cartoonists are “closer to god” as they can minutely observe characteristics of human beings, Modi had said at the time.
On whether he was planning to challenge Meta’s action, Acharya said that he was trying but had not been able to contact Instagram’s help centre.
“Everything is [Artificial Intelligence]-controlled, which makes it difficult to get any solution there,” he said.
“I have heard that the only solution is to approach the court,” Acharya told Scroll. “For any institution or any organisation, it would be easier to take legal route, but for an independent cartoonist like me it is not affordable.”
Also read: The Art of Resistance: Satish Acharya, Manjul bring smiles (and insight) to a world of despair
Manjul’s cartoon was also about the Election Commission. He said Instagram had restricted access to it in India.
“When satire gets censored, perhaps the cartoon has made its point,” he said on X.
In a separate post, Manjul alleged that other cartoonists had also had their posts blocked or restricted following government orders, but flagged that some may not speak publicly about it because they are associated with organisations and fear that doing so could affect those associations.
Instagram has restricted this cartoon in India.
I am posting the cartoon again, along with the notice I received from Instagram.
According to the notice, access has been restricted in India “pursuant to a notice from the Government of India / Law Enforcement” and based on… pic.twitter.com/y3UXWCCDIg — MANJUL (@MANJULtoons) September 27, 2026
The blocking orders came nearly a month after The Indian Express reported on August 19 that the government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content.
This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.
In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, the newspaper quoted Right to Information records as having shown.
Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders.
The integration allows content flagged through government directions on the portal to be automatically removed from Meta’s platforms without a separate human review.
Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.
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