New Delhi: It has been reported that Union and state governments in India ordered Twitter (now Elon Musk-owned X) to remove about 1,400 posts or accounts between March 2024 and June 2025.

Importantly, “more than 70%” of these removal notices were issued by an agency under the control of the home minister, Amit Shah, the Cybercrime Coordination Centre, which has developed the Sahyog website, where all social media platforms are expected to register. X has not joined, maintaining that it is a ‘censorship portal.’

Reuters has cited court filings by X which it has seen and reviewed. As a response to X in court, the central government filed a 92-page report drafted by the cybercrime unit to show X is "hosting illegal content". The unit analysed nearly “300 posts it deemed unlawful, including misinformation, hoaxes, and child sexual-abuse material.”

Reuters finds a pattern of several posts reflecting views critical of the government, being cited as posts capable of inflaming communal tensions and divides. 

In January, the cybercrime unit asked X to remove three posts containing what officials said were fabricated images that portrayed Shah's son, International Cricket Council chairman Jay Shah, "in a derogatory manner" alongside a bikini-clad woman. The posts "dishonour prominent office bearers and VIPs", the notices from the government are reported to have said.

Only one of those posts was taken down. Jay Shah didn't respond to Reuters queries, says the news agency.

X told the court that the railway ministry has been issuing orders “to censor press reports about matters of public interest.” These seeking the removal of posts, “that contained news coverage of stampede at New Delhi's biggest railway station that left 18 dead.”

A change since 2023

Earlier, India's information technology and information and broadcasting ministries were the only ones, comprising 99 officials across India that could order content removal, and only for “threats to sovereignty, defense, security, foreign relations, public order, or incitement.” The officers could recommend, but only ministries would take the final call.

But in 2023 the IT ministry, says Reuters, empowered all central and state agencies and police to issue takedown notices for "any information which is prohibited under any law". They could do so under existing legal provisions, the ministry had said in a directive, citing the need for "effective" content removal.

In a June 24 filing, X said some of the blocking orders issued by officials "target content involving satire or criticism of the ruling government, and show a pattern of abuse of authority to suppress free speech."

The government has been criticised for this new takedown regime, seeing it as one targeting free speech and dissent, expected to flourish in a democracy. 

Reuters has quoted Subramaniam Vincent, director of journalism and media ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics as saying; 

"Can a claim that some content is unlawful be termed as indeed unlawful merely because the government claims so?" 

He added, "The executive branch cannot be both the arbiter of legality of media content, and the issuer of takedown notices."

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