Indian government on Sunday denied making any legal requests to microblogging site X to ban international news agency Reuters’s handle in India. The clarification comes hours after Reuters’s X handle in India showed that it had been blocked “in response to a legal demand”.
“There is no requirement from the Government of India to withhold the Reuters handle. We are continuously working with ‘X’ to resolve the problem,” the Official Spokesperson, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said.
Earlier, news agency PTI, citing government sources, reported that the request to block Reuters’s X account came from India during Indo-Pak war.
“An order was issued on May 7 (during Operation Sindoor) but it was not enforced. X seems to have enforced that order now which is a mistake on their part. Government has reached out to X for resolving it at the earliest,” a government source told news agency PTI.
While affiliated X handles such as Reuters Tech News, Reuters Fact Check, Reuters Asia, and Reuters China are accessible in India, both official X account of the global news agency as well as Reuters World handles are inaccessible.
X users attempting to access the main account can see a message that reads: “Account withheld. @ Reuters has been withheld in IN in response to a legal demand.”
On its help centre page, X explains such messages “about country withheld content” means X was compelled to withhold the entire account specified or posts in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order or local laws.
