Television channels in India used to have a hard limit on how much advertising they could show. In any given hour, a channel could run at most twelve minutes of advertising content, made up of ten minutes of paid commercials and two minutes the channel could use to promote its own shows. That limit was written into law as sub-rule (11) of Rule 7 of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994, and it no longer exists. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting removed it through the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2026, notified as G.S.R. 751(E) on 21 August 2026.

The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 is the law that governs how cable television operates in India, from registering cable operators to deciding what channels can and cannot show. Section 5 of the Act requires every programme carried on a cable network to conform to a prescribed programme code, and Section 6 does the same for advertisements, requiring conformity with a prescribed advertisement code. Acting under Section 22, the government first framed the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994 through notification G.S.R. 729(E) dated 29 September 1994. Rule 6 of those Rules became the programme code envisaged under Section 5, and Rule 7 became the advertisement code envisaged under Section 6, covering everything from prohibited categories of advertisements to, until now, how long advertising breaks could run.

The twelve-minute limit was added to Rule 7 as sub-rule (11) through an amendment in 2006, at a time when India had a small fraction of the television channels it has today. It stayed in place through the twenty-seven amendments made to the Rules between 1995 and January 2025, right up to the one notified in 2026, spanning a period in which the number of television channels in the country grew from about sixty to more than nine hundred.

What the 2026 Amendment Does

Rule 2 of the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2026 does one thing: it omits sub-rule (11) from Rule 7. Nothing has been put in its place. There is no new time limit, higher or lower, and no different formula for how advertising time should be counted. Every other part of Rule 7 stays exactly as it was, including the restrictions on what kind of advertisements can be shown at all, such as the bans on tobacco and liquor advertising.

In practical terms, television channels are now free to decide for themselves how much advertising time to run within an hour. It is worth being precise about who this affects: Section 4 of the Act deals with the registration of cable operators, the local distributors who carry channels into homes, not with the channels or broadcasters themselves. Television channels are separately authorised to broadcast under the Ministry’s Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines, which in turn require compliance with the same programme and advertising codes under Rule 6 and Rule 7.

It is through that route, rather than through Section 4, that the removal of sub-rule (11) reaches broadcasters directly. Streaming and digital platforms have never operated under a comparable cap under Indian law, and this amendment brings television broadcasting closer to that same position, though the two continue to be governed by entirely separate frameworks. Digital news publishers and OTT platforms fall under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, framed under the Information Technology Act, 2000, which has never carried a duration-based advertising limit of the kind Rule 7(11) imposed on cable television.

Why the Government Made This Change

The twelve-minute cap had been in place since a time when cable television was mostly analogue and viewers had far fewer channels to choose from. The government has pointed to how much the sector has grown since then, with hundreds of channels now available across digital cable, DTH and other platforms, as one of the reasons the old limit no longer fit the market. Industry bodies, including the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation and the News Broadcasters & Digital Association, had also raised the issue with the Ministry repeatedly over the years, and the government had at earlier points considered smaller changes, such as a modest increase in the time limit or genre-specific norms, before deciding to remove the cap altogether through this amendment.

This amendment only touches the advertising time limit under sub-rule (11). All other obligation broadcasters have under the Act and the Rules is unaffected. Channels still have to follow the programme code under Rule 6, the remaining provisions of the advertising code under Rule 7, and the three-tier grievance mechanism set up by the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021, under which a viewer’s complaint first goes to the broadcaster, then to the broadcaster’s self-regulatory body, and finally, if still unresolved, to the Inter-Departmental Committee functioning as the Oversight Mechanism under the Ministry.

The Act also gives the government tools to act if a channel does not conform to either code. Under Section 19, an authorised officer can order a cable operator to stop transmitting a programme or channel that does not conform to the programme code under Section 5 or the advertisement code under Section 6. Section 20 gives the Central Government a parallel, broader power to regulate or prohibit transmission on similar grounds. Both of these enforcement powers apply regardless of the removal of the time cap, since they concern the content of what is shown, not how long the advertising breaks run.

Rules made under the Act do not become permanent simply by being notified. Section 22(3) of the Act requires every rule made under it, including this one, to be laid before both Houses of Parliament, while in session, for a total period of thirty days. During that window, Parliament can modify the rule or resolve that it should not have been made. If that happens, the rule takes effect only in its modified form, or ceases to have effect, from that point onward, though anything already done under the rule before such a change remains valid. Until Parliament acts, if at all, the omission of sub-rule (11) stands as notified.

It is also worth noting that the entire framework this amendment operates within, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 itself, is the subject of a broader legislative overhaul under consideration. A draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, first placed in the public domain in November 2023, proposes to replace the 1995 Act altogether with a new law covering a wider range of platforms, including OTT and digital content. The draft has faced repeated pushback from stakeholders and has still not been formally introduced in Parliament. Until it is passed, the 1995 Act and the Rules framed under it, as now amended, remain the governing law for cable television advertising.