In its latest annual report on digital censorship in India, internet watchdog Internet Monitoring Action Project pointed to the blocking of news content websites Hindutva Watch and the Kashmir Walla and what “appears to be a trend in blocking services that allow users to operate the internet anonymously”.
iMAP is a collaboration which analyses data collected and published by the Open Observatory of Network Interference. The report on India, which was released in October, is authored by Divyank Katire of the Centre for Internet and Society, and Siti Nurliza Samsudin and Trinidad Carreno Pineda of the Sinar Project.
Earlier this year, a report by Access Now, an internet advocacy watchdog, and the #KeepItOn coalition had pointed out that India documented the most shutdowns globally – an honour that the country has carried for six years now in a row – with 116 instances.
Throughout the period of its study, from June 2023 to June this year, 7.7 million measurements from 12,827 websites were tested on OONI. “At the time of writing, the current test list contains 1,660 websites in the Global Test List and 721 websites in the India Test List.”
It said a parliamentary response suggests that out of the 6,775 items blocked by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 2022, about half were Twitter/X posts and accounts, and about a quarter were on Facebook. “There was a similar trend between 2019 and 2021. In 2023, the government issued 6,954 such orders by October.”
“In its transparency report, Meta revealed that it restricted access to 10,558 items (5,882 temporarily) between July 2022 and June 2023 and 4,400 items (350 temporarily) between July 2023 and December 2023.”
“Google received 3,868 government requests in 2023 to takedown 37,219 items and complied with roughly 40 percent of the requests. Since 2022, X has stopped publishing transparency reports detailing government takedown requests.”
Among various challenges to internet freedom in India, the report refers to the IT Rules. “There have been at least 17 challenges to the IT Rules 2021 in various High Courts in India, with the Kerala, Bombay, and Madras High Courts passing interim stay orders against specific provisions of the rules,” it says, adding that the Supreme Court placed a stay on the Centre’s notification in March, and transferred all pending petitions relating to the IT Rules 2021 to the Delhi High Court.
In February 2024, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, under the direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, issued blocking orders for 177 social media accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram, Snap and Reddit relating to farmers’ protests in the country, it said. “Experts pointed out that such preemptive blocking of entire accounts had no legal basis. The blocks were issued for the duration of the protest, but some of the accounts reportedly remain blocked.”
It said the Election Commission of India ordered X to block content from elected politicians, political parties, and candidates for the duration of the Lok Sabha election. “X complied with the orders but issued a statement that disagreed with the blocks and called for more transparency. It also publicly disclosed the orders.”
It said the X account of Hindutva Watch, a project that documents hate speeches and hate crimes against religious minorities in the country, was blocked, with its founder approaching the Delhi High Court to challenge the decision.
On April 4, this year, Bolta Hindustan, a Hindi news portal, was blocked by YouTube, citing a blocking notice from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under Rule 15(2) of the IT Rules 2021, it said. “YouTube reinstated the channel a month later, stating that the account did not violate its Terms of Service. Legal experts noted that there is no provision to keep blocking orders of this nature confidential.”
Another online news portal, National Dastak, with a following of almost 10 million subscribers, also had their YouTube channel blocked under similar grounds, it said.
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