In contemporary discover, govt asks Twitter to dam 1200 accounts ‘flagged as Khalistan sympathisers or backed by Pakistan’
3 min read The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has despatched a contemporary listing of practically 1200 accounts to Twitter, asking it to both droop or block them in India, sources stated. These accounts –– the brand new discover despatched on February 4 –– stated, “were flagged by security agencies as accounts of Khalistan sympathisers or backed by Pakistan”.
“Many of these accounts were also automated bots that were used for sharing and amplifying misinformation and provocative contents on farmers protests. However, Twitter has not yet complied with this order,” senior authorities officers stated, asking to not be named.
Apart from the discover, authorities officers additionally stated the federal government had famous that the social media platform’s international Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey had ‘liked’ some tweets by overseas celebrities made in assist of the continued farmer protests towards the brand new farm legal guidelines.
“If the platform does not want to respond to the notices sent by us, they are free to challenge it legally and get a stay order from the court. But until then they are bound by the laws of the country and will have to block these accounts as per the notice,” an official stated.
The new listing is along with an previous listing of 257 accounts despatched to Twitter as part of a discover on January 31 through which the IT ministry had requested the platform to dam these handles and sure hashtags utilized by them. The January 31 discover had stated that these handles had been “spreading misinformation” concerning the ongoing farmer protests, which had the potential to “lead to imminent violence affecting public order situation in the country”.
Twitter had then responded by blocking among the accounts however had additionally subsequently unblocked these accounts, which had irked the IT ministry. Later in its reply, Twitter had refused to dam these accounts additional citing freedom of speech on its platform. The reply, nevertheless, had not gone down nicely with the federal government, which had stated that the platform couldn’t presumably “assume the role of a court and justify non-compliance”.
“It may be noted that the impracticability or disproportionality of the said measure cannot be decided at the instance of Twitter which is an intermediary bound by the orders of the Central Government. It may further be noted that the banning of the said hashtag is accompanied by the content that is attached to the said hashtag by the users using the same,” IT ministry had stated in its response to Twitter refusing to ban the stated accounts.
The notices have been despatched to Twitter beneath 69A of the Information Technology Act, which says the central authorities or any of its officers authorised by it may well “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence” direct any company or middleman to dam entry to its providers and accounts to residents inside the geographical limits of India.