New Delhi: X, formerly known as Twitter, said it took down four posts from its website in compliance with legal orders from the Election Commission of India (ECI) but that it “disagreed with these actions”.
“The [ECI] has issued takedown orders requiring X to act on posts containing political speech shared from elected politicians, political parties and candidates for office,” X’s ‘global governance affairs’ team said.
It continued: “In compliance with the orders, we have withheld these posts for the remainder of the election period.
“However, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general.”
Copies of the ECI’s communication with X indicates that the poll body asked on April 2 and 3 for the four posts to be removed on the grounds that they violated the model code of conduct.
According to the commission, four posts – one each by the YSR Congress, Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu, Aam Aadmi Party and Bihar BJP chief Samrat Choudhary – violated the parts of the model code regulating criticism of political parties and workers.
It cited clause 2 of part 1 of the model code, which says that parties and candidates must refrain from criticising the private lives of those from other parties and that they must avoid criticism based on “unverified allegations or distortion”.
The ECI also invoked an advisory it issued to all political parties last month, which made similar demands of political workers.
X said it was publishing the ECI’s takedown orders “in the interest of transparency” and that it had notified the users concerned.
“We call on the Election Commission to publish all of its takedown orders going forward,” it added.
In an email to X, the commission also said the social media platform was a signatory to the voluntary code of ethics, which required taking expeditious action on the ECI’s legal requests and preventing misuse of its platform.
X shared a similar post in February saying the Union government had ordered it to withhold certain accounts and that it did not agree with the orders.
“The Indian government has issued executive orders requiring X to act on specific accounts and posts, subject to potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment,” the official X page announced in a post on February 22.
“In compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone; however, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts,” it added.
X further said that legal restrictions pose hurdles in the path of X publishing the Indian government’s orders – despite the site’s belief that they should be published. It did not elaborate on what the restrictions were.
The post came amidst countrywide concerns that over a dozen X accounts that functioned as official pages of farmers’ organisations and unions ahead of their ‘Delhi Chalo’ protest had been withheld in India.
Last April, in an interview with BBC, Musk had said that he was likely to comply with the blocking orders issued by the Indian government instead of facing a situation where Twitter employees were being sent to jail.
