The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) will publish proposed digital safeguards for minors for public review later this year. According to MediaNama, the body under the Ministry of Women and Child Development targets finalizing these rules in early 2027. An anonymous official, cited by journalist Aditi Agarwal in her newsletter The Tech Trace, confirmed this timeline. The commission has spent the last four months drafting the framework and has already engaged with various stakeholders.
On November 12, the NCPCR is meeting with representatives from major digital platforms to discuss the draft. Invitations were sent to companies including Meta, Google, X, Snapchat, Reddit, Roblox, and Discord. MediaNama noted that the commission previously held individual and group sessions with industry leaders and civil society groups. In August, the body began developing a code of conduct to improve online protections for young users, a process that has now advanced to the draft stage.
The proposed "Child Safety Implementation Matrix" outlines specific operational requirements for platforms. Key provisions include embedding safety into platform architecture so that protections are active by default. The document suggests that real-time location sharing should be off unless users enable it. Additionally, platforms would need to use robust age-verification methods that distinguish between younger children and older teens, rather than treating all under-18s as a single group. Data collection would be limited to what is necessary, and behavioral profiles would be restricted for advertising purposes.
Further measures address addictive design elements like infinite scroll and autoplay, which should be modified for minors. The matrix also calls for automated detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and grooming patterns across text, images, and video, including support for Indian languages. An official described the current inputs as exploratory, implying the final rules may not be immediately binding. This approach follows a recent Supreme Court judgment that upheld internet access as a fundamental right while proposing a framework for managing CSAM.
Separately, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is discussing accountability measures with intermediaries. This broader regulatory context includes several recent court petitions seeking restrictions on children's access to social media, ranging from age-based curfews to algorithmic design changes.