Indian ‘X‘ accounts withheld after Operation Sindoor restored
Even as a clutch of Indian accounts on X, formerly Twitter, geared up to challenge their accounts' censorship in India from May 7 onwards, the Union government unblocked access to many of them, pre-empting a court hearing. On May 17, , a New Delhi-based online outlet, was restored after 10 days of being 'withheld' on government orders from viewers in India.
While much of the 8,000 accounts on X — the only platform to disclose statistics on the scale of blocking orders it received in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor — were Pakistani, many Indian and non-Pakistani handles were restricted from view as well. The orders were sent under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Arpit Sharma, a content creator with 3.4 lakh followers on Instagram, had his X account withheld on May 8. He got in touch with a lawyer who was also in the process of preparing a legal challenge to the blocking of Maktoob and The Kashmiriyat, an Anantnag-based news outlet. 'Just before our case was to be listed [in the Supreme Court], my account got restored,' Mr. Sharma said on May 17.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not respond to a query regarding the accounts' blocking, and Mr. Sharma said he had received no communication from the government regarding the withholding of his account. Anuradha Bhasin, a senior journalist in Kashmir, has also had her account restored, as has the outlet Free Press Kashmir.
4PM News, a YouTube outlet, was also restored, senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal told the Supreme Court on May 13. Mr. Sibal asked the court to continue considering the petition, to hold 2009 blocking rules unconstitutional. The petition was subsequently tagged with related matters.
There were other outlets whose censorship was resolved in a far shorter time frame: BBC Urdu was withheld on May 9, but was available again within three days; the Chinese state-run news outlet Global Times and Türkiye's TRT World were both withheld and restored within a day.
The New Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre, India (SFLC) said that while misinformation was concerning, 'the widespread blocking of social media accounts without prior notice or an opportunity to contest takedowns is neither just nor effective.' The non-profit has 'filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of Rule 16 and the reading down of Rules 8 and 9 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009, for violating Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution,' it said.
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