New Delhi: Modi government departments are setting up Quick Response Teams (QRTs) to ensure a timely and coordinated response to fake, misleading and manipulated content circulating on social media, according to an official.
🚨 BIG MOVE! Govt declares WAR on fake news
> QRTs being set up in ministries to counter fake news within 2 hours💥Ministries are setting up Teams to flag fake, misleading, manipulated or out-of-context social media content 🎯
⚡ Electricity, Agriculture & Commerce ministries… pic.twitter.com/9OQjrh6ym7
— The Analyzer (News Updates🗞️) (@Indian_Analyzer) August 18, 2026
The initiative aims to strengthen government engagement with citizens and ensure that rumours, misinformation, fake content and misleading posts are addressed promptly through factual and verified information.
The QRTs will be responsible for scrutinising questionable social media content, coordinating with relevant officials and issuing factual responses. They will also monitor discussions and posts related to the policies, schemes, programmes, decisions and announcements of their respective ministries and departments.
Departments dealing with power, agriculture and commerce have already constituted their QRTs.
According to the official, the government expects ministries to respond within two hours of identifying or noting such content, underlining the need for faster communication in an environment where misleading information can spread rapidly across digital platforms.
The social media and digital media teams of individual ministries will regularly monitor relevant platforms. They will also receive appropriate inputs from the New Media Wing of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Any post or content that appears to be fake, misleading, factually incorrect, manipulated, distorted or taken out of context, or which could potentially cause public confusion, will be brought to the attention of the concerned QRT. The teams will then verify the information and prepare the factual position before coordinating an appropriate response.
The QRTs will also coordinate with the PIB Fact Check Unit wherever necessary, adding another layer of verification to the government’s response mechanism.
Officials said cases involving high virality, significant public interest, sensitive policy matters, potential public harm, legal implications, coordinated misinformation campaigns or inter-ministerial issues would be escalated to senior authorities for further action.
The move comes amid increasing government focus on the spread of fake and harmful content on social media platforms. With manipulated videos, AI-generated material and misleading posts capable of reaching large audiences within minutes, officials have stressed the importance of faster and more effective communication.
Earlier this month, the Information Technology Ministry held multiple discussions with Meta over the continued circulation of AI-generated harmful content and unlabelled synthetic videos on its platforms. The government also pushed for greater human oversight in content moderation and stronger mechanisms to address India’s diverse languages and local contexts.
The new QRT framework is aimed at ensuring that government departments do not remain reactive to misinformation after it has already gone viral. Instead, ministries will have dedicated mechanisms to monitor, verify and respond to misleading narratives in real time.
The initiative marks a stronger push towards coordinated digital communication, with the government seeking to ensure that accurate and verified information reaches citizens quickly in the face of rapidly spreading misinformation.
