India Blocked 59 Apps in 2020. In 2025 It Ordered 3,000 Removed in Three Weeks. What Gets an App Blocked.

On 29 June 2020, India blocked 59 apps, among them TikTok, Shein and CamScanner. Within three years, four more orders had taken the total past 500.

Then the scale changed. Between 29 April and 15 May 2025, the IT ministry issued three orders directing Google to remove more than 3,000 apps from the Play Store. The list included VPNs, streaming apps, language tools, AI generators, calculators and wallpaper apps. Many were traced to developers outside China.

How Blocking Works

Section 69A of the IT Act lets the government order access blocked on grounds such as sovereignty and integrity, security of the state and public order. The orders are confidential. Users face no penalty for using a blocked app; the obligation falls on the platforms, which must comply or be penalised. The ministry has even told an RTI applicant that it "does not ban any app" – it blocks access.

Because the orders are secret, the reasons are usually inferred from the government's public statements and from what the returning apps had to change. Two cases show the pattern clearly.

The Ones That Came Back

In both cases the condition for return was not a fine or an apology. It was control of Indian users' data, and in Shein's case control of the business itself.

The Pattern Behind the Orders

The 2020-2023 orders were dominated by apps with Chinese ownership, announced in batches with security language. The 2025 orders were different: broader categories, more countries, and very little public explanation. Neither the ministry nor Google explained the removals, and the orders surfaced only briefly on the Lumen Database before being withdrawn.

For an app entering India, the lesson is less about nationality than about traceability: who owns the app, where Indian data goes, who answers to Indian authorities, and how quickly.

Why Apps Keep Coming Anyway

Shein spent five years finding a route back. Krafton rebuilt its server setup and accepted a trial period. Both judged a market of 1.11 billion internet subscribers worth the terms. Hinge now counts India as its second-largest market by downloads.

Most apps never meet Section 69A. The ones that do usually had an ownership, data or content question nobody asked before launch. Which of those questions apply to a given app, and how its data, hosting and Indian representation should be set up to answer them, is cheaper to settle before launch than after a blocking order.

Part of Naraway's research series India Market Entry in 2026.