28 October 2019: Indian Journalists Union (IJU) expresses serious concern at the increasing requests of the Government of India to Twitter to block accounts, particularly of media organisations in Kashmir. Twitter, which is not bound to accept all the blocking requests, has apparently been bowing to the Indian government’s pressure by blocking more and more twitter accounts.

In a statement, IJU Acting President Geetartha Pathak and Secretary General and IFJ Vice President Sabina Inderjit criticised the Union government for targeting the Kashmiri media and their twitter accounts. Making a note of some media reports about gagging Twitter accounts as per blocking orders sourced from Lumen database, the IJU said though it could not verify the reports, the attempts amounted to backdoor censorship on Kashmiri media, which is not acceptable.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is citing section 69A of India’s Information Technology Act, which authorises government agencies to direct intermediaries like Twitter to block or remove online content on a range of grounds like security and public order. Government agencies seeking to limit access to online content under the IT Act must record the reasons in writing. The IJU observed that entire process is opaque and it is impossible to know whether the blocking requests of the government comply with the specificity of legal regulations.