Centre Denies Blocking Twitter, Raiding Houses Of Employees During Farmers' Protests

The Centre on Friday denied that it shut down the services of Twitter and raided homes of Twitter executives for their coverage of farmers’ protests during the period 2020 to 2021. However, the Centre did serve Twitter a notice with a ‘significant consequences’ warning after it failed to take down 167 of 3,750 URLs it had asked to block during the period of farmers' agitation.

In a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha on July 21, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Centre issued orders to block 3750 Twitter URLs during August 2020 to December 2021 under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Out of aforesaid 3750 URLs, Twitter did not comply with 167 URLs, the minister said in his response. "Therefore, Government issued notice to Twitter on 27th June 2022 giving them opportunity to comply fully, failing which they have to face significant consequences as mentioned in the IT Act, 2000.Subsequent to this notice, Twitter complied with all the blocking directions issued under section 69A of IT Act, 2000," he said.

Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 provides power to the Government to issue directions to block any information if it is necessary or expedient to do so in the "interest of sovereignty and integrity, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for inciting cognizable offence relating to above."

His response comes months after a controversy erupted following Twitter former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey's claims that Indian government directed the social media platform to remove posts and accounts which also “manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’, ‘raid the homes of your employees’.” Back then, Chandrasekhar termed the claims as an "outright lie".

Dorsey was referring to the farmers' protest that took place in India during 2020-21 when Twitter reportedly received requests from the government around posts by “particular journalists that were critical of the government”.

However, MoS Chandrasekhar maintained that it was Dorsey’s Twitter that repeatedly violated Indian laws. About Twitter’s alleged compliance failures, Chandrasekhar tweeted, “It behaved as if the laws of India did not apply to it.” He also denied any instances of Twitter employees being sent to jail or Twitter being shut down. 

The Monsoon session of Parliament started on Thursday, a day after a horrific video of two women being sexually assaulted and paraded by a mob on May 4 in a Manipur village went viral, triggering a nationwide outrage. In the Rajya Sabha, the proceedings were disrupted for the second day as opposition MPs created ruckus over the Manipur violence and other issues.