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India Unveils 'Do No Harm' AI Governance Guidelines With Light-Touch Oversight

The framework prioritizes innovation by using a phased, techno-legal plan built on existing laws.

Overview

  • MeitY’s guidelines set seven guiding principles, or Seven Sutras, focused on trust, people-first design, accountability, explainability, fairness, safety and responsible innovation.
  • A new institutional architecture is proposed: an AI Governance Group for coordination, a Technology & Policy Expert Committee for guidance and an AI Safety Institute for risk assessment and standards.
  • The action plan spans short, medium and long terms, calling for India-specific risk classifications, an AI incident reporting system, human oversight for high-risk uses, common standards and pilot regulatory sandboxes.
  • Officials emphasized a light-touch approach that leverages current statutes and encourages techno-legal safeguards, with sectoral regulators expected to handle domain-specific compliance.
  • Separately, the government has moved to mandate labelling of AI-generated content as a basic transparency requirement, and the PSA cautioned that AGI timelines may be accelerating ahead of the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026.