By Sravasti Dasgupta
This article is part of a special series. Read part one here.
New Delhi: On Monday (February 23), independent journalist Anna M.M. Vetticad wrote on X that she had received an email from the social media platform notifying her that they had received a blocking order from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) citing Section 69A of the Information and Technology Act, 2000.
The notice was in connection with Vetticad’s X post on February 20, when she questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s post calling the Indian Youth Congress’s protest at the AI Summit last week a “national shame”. She asked why a democratic protest is a matter of “shame” while attacks on Muslims and Dalits, or hate speech by government leaders, is not. It is unclear whether the blocking order for Vetticad’s post on X came via the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA)’s contentious Sahyog portal, as the social media platform has challenged the government’s use of the portal in court.
Earlier this month, The Wire’s Instagram account was blocked for about two hours after the government found a 52-second satirical cartoon on the recent parliament impasse offensive. The impasse was triggered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to discuss questions about his government’s mismanagement of the 2020 border crisis with China.
The takedown of Vetticad’s post and The Wire’s Instagram account blocking have once again brought attention to the vast, vague and indiscriminate powers being exercised by the Union government to block content online – even if all the posts do is raise legitimate questions.
The Wire has now accessed the User Manual for Sahyog Portal (Authorised Agencies of States/UTs), that details to several levels of government how bulk takedown orders – rather than for single pages or URLs – can be issued at once. The manual even provides the option of uploading a First Information Report (FIR) if intermediaries do not comply with takedown requests from government authorities.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
