India's MeitY Nears Completion of New AI Regulation Consultation Paper

Storyboard18, citing a Moneycontrol report based on people familiar with the matter, says India's central government is close to finishing a consultation paper on AI regulation and is expected to seek public feedback on the safeguards it proposes. A senior government official said that, in preparing the document, officials studied regulatory approaches adopted in other countries and consulted several stakeholders, among them academics. The article was first published on 4 November 2026.

Expected topics include safety, circulation of deepfakes and how the technology might affect users psychologically. It will also cover skilling needs and ways to spread AI's gains more widely. Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw first announced the consultation on 8 October, when he said the paper would come out within a month and named AI safety as a main focus. On 23 October he repeated that it would appear in the coming weeks, said the government would ask citizens, businesses and AI users for responses, and indicated that the scale of new AI risks could justify legislation and extra regulation.

The exercise follows guidelines India issued in November 2025 on AI governance, which set out seven guiding principles, including human oversight where feasible, accountability in proportion to harm, and transparency for users and regulators. The drafting committee noted that existing laws can handle several AI risks but advised examining gaps on accountability for harm, data protection in AI development and copyright in training material. The guidelines also called for common methods to show where digital content comes from and whether it is authentic. Institutionally, they proposed an AI Governance Group supported by a Technology and Policy Expert Committee, and an AI Safety Institute for research and testing.