Amid a tussle between the Centre and Twitter over the past few weeks over the compliance with the new IT rules, it has come to light that the number of orders issue by the Centre to social media companies to block posts and accounts has seen a steep rise over the past couple of years.
Nearly 6,000 takedown orders were issued to companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube until June 7 this year alone, according to a report by Hindustan Times quoting a source. Officials said that in 2019, about 3,600 posts were ordered to be taken down, the number rose to 9,800 in 2020.
“The posts concerned various issues including the recent farmers’ agitation, Kashmir, Khalistan and the pandemic that could have been a threat to public order or violated section 69(A) of the IT Act. The orders were sent to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Telegram. 99% of the orders have been complied with,” an anonymous source told the publication.
Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 empowers the government to block any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource in the interest of sovereignty and security of the country, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence related to these.
Over 4,400 URLs from Facebook and Twitter were blocked by the government in 2020 under Section 69A of the IT Act, the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology told the Parliament on March 10.
The order to block posts and accounts are issued by an officer appointed by the Centre. This officer chairs an inter-ministerial committee of officials from across ministries and India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). Currently, the designated officer is Pronab Mohanty, he is the deputy director-general of UIDAI.
With PTI inputs
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