Several accounts on social media platform X, some of whom are viewed as being critical of the Union government, have been withheld in India since Wednesday.
On their profiles, the platform said that they had been withheld in the country in response to a legal demand.
There was no official statement from the government on why the accounts had been blocked.
The handles include parody accounts @DrNimoYadav, @Nehr_who, @indian_armada, and popular profiles such as @mrjethwani_ and @Doc_RGM. The account of journalist and activist Sandeep Singh was also withheld.
Hartosh Singh Bal, the editor of The Caravan, said that a March 14 tweet by the magazine that promoted a 2022 article had also been blocked.
The tweet had also featured the cover of the April 2002 issue of the India Today magazine, which had Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat at the time, on it. The headline on that cover read “Hero of Hatred”.
Bal said that X had received a blocking order from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under Section 69A of Information Technology Act.
Under Section 69A of the Act, an authorised personnel in the Union government, not below the rank of a joint secretary, can send content removal orders to social media platforms. The provision allows the Union government to issue content-blocking orders to online intermediaries if the content is deemed a threat to national security, sovereignty or public order.
The Congress said that the withholding of the accounts was unacceptable.
Advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said on Thursday that it was concerned by reports of social media accounts and posts being withheld in India, “including satire and criticism of the government”.
“Recent reporting shows users receiving generic ‘withheld in India’ notices or emails under Section 69A from social media platforms, with little or no explanation, while independent reporting has documented takedowns affecting speech that appears political, satirical or critical rather than clearly unlawful,” the foundation said.
The foundation said that the platforms “must also do more than send boilerplate messages”.
“They should provide meaningful notice, preserve records for challenge and publish granular transparency reporting given online censorship also impacts the public right to receive information,” it added.
Prateek Waghre, the head of programs at Tech Global Institute, said on Thursday that there seemed to be a “fresh mini-wave of restrictions/suspensions”.
“Seems to be more account-level restrictions rather than tweets,” he said on social media.
A list compiled by policy researcher Pranesh Prakash showed that at least 316 X accounts in India were blocked as of Thursday because of legal demands.
Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed the list of blocked X accounts to Prateek Waghre instead of Pranesh Prakash.
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