DH Toon | Is this Modi govt's plan B to tackle Covid?

The Narendra Modi government has been critical of the media coverage of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India. The criticism isn't just limited to the Indian media reports and a social media clampdown but has also been extended to certain international publications.

More recently, the Indian High Commission in Australia had written a letter to the editor of the Australian publication 'The Australian' over a report titled 'Modi leads India out of a lockdown...and into a viral apocalypse'. "Urge The Australian to publish the rejoinder to set the record straight on the covid management in India and also refrain from publishing such baseless articles in future," it said in a tweet that carried the letter.

On the social media front, Facebook had blocked posts tagged #ResignModi amid raging criticism of the government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis but restored it hours later calling it a 'mistake'. Twitter had also removed or restricted access to several critical posts on orders from the government, which called it fake news.

After the social media platforms removed content related to the Covid-19 pandemic in India, the White House had said that the move was not aligned with America's view of freedom of speech around the world.