From November 2025 to September 2026, only 7,560 of the 57,364 new complaints filed were disposed of.
Digital rights group Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in) called for public and timely disclosure of the social media Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) orders after finding a widening gap between the number of appeals filed and the number of appeals resolved.
The organisation used publicly available government data to show how the GAC is yet to resolve 49,978 appeals out of the total 63,353 appeals as of September, 2026 compared to 174 pending appeals in November 2025.
Between January and November 2025, a total of 3,667 new appeals were filed with the GAC and 3,734 were disposed of. However, after November until September 2026, only 7,560 of the 57,364 new complaints filed were disposed of. This means that the number of appeals filed rose roughly 15-fold while the number of disposals only doubled.
Slow response
Users are also waiting significantly longer for decisions, said SFLC.in in its findings from the Beyond the Report Button seminar. The organisation’s tracking indicates that appeals now take an average of 90 to 100 days to be resolved as against the GAC’s “endeavour” to resolve complaints within 30 days. The organisation has also recorded multiple appeals taking more than 120 days to be resolved.
Commenting on SFLC.in findings, Rakesh Maheshwari, former Senior Director and Group Coordinator, MeitY, said, “The problem actually started, as I have come to know, probably somewhere in the month of May onwards, when all of a sudden thousands of complaints started coming.” He argued that middlemen have started putting hundreds of complaints using their Aadhaar number, hindering genuine appeals in the system.
Further, financial fraud is another layer of complexity as the GAC does not handle such crimes and so leaves victims to navigate multiple systems, including the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), the 1930 helpline, Sanchar Saathi, banks and platform reporting mechanisms.
In light of this, SFLC.in has asked for stricter and predictable timelines for appeal resolution, submission review and rejoinder, stronger procedural safeguards and transparency at every stage. It also pushed for reduced reliance on automated systems and alternatives to Aadhaar for accessing the GAC portal.
The cost of delay
During the discussions, Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor, The Wire, and Gajendra Singh, Founder & Editor, Newsdiggy, talked about the concerns around growing censorship and takedown moves by the system. With such a background, the deliberately slow process becomes the punishment, as per Saket Gokhale, former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha).
In a separate panel, Hariti Chadda, Senior Manager Public Policy, Truecaller, explained how information isn’t shared directly between telecom operators and the platform but channelled through platforms such as Chakshu facilitated by the Department of Telecommunications. Rather than this, industry players like the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) asked that the process be complicated for scammers instead.
“The scammers actually employ the best social engineering people, psychologists, expert network guys, and pay them good money. Essentially, the cost of doing business by a scamster has to be made more expensive,” said Vikram Tiwathia, Deputy Director General, COAI. Adding to this, Srikanth L of CashlessConsumer asked that banks, telecom service providers and internet providers develop a granular transparency portal on their actions in this regard.
Published on September 30, 2026
