The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Blocking Committee on Thursday (May 3) confirmed the issuance of emergency blocking order on the official X (ex-Twitter) account of the Jharkhand Congress for tweeting about the Union Home Minister and Doctored video of Bharatiya Janata Paty, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Amit Shah said on April 28, according to officials aware of the matter.
Officials said the final order was a temporary blocking order under which @INCJharkhand would be inaccessible from within India until the elections were over, after which the account could be restored. The account remains visible outside India.
The blocking order was issued at the request of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Center (I4C) of the Ministry of Home Affairs. I4C’s Threat Analysis Department has been studying cases of Shah’s tampering with videos.
That was the only blocking order discussed at Thursday’s meeting. This is the first time that Section 69A of the Information Technology Act has been used to block the social media accounts of political parties. The bill comes amid the ongoing general election.
Under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the government has the power to block online content for six specific reasons – sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, national security, friendly relations with foreign countries, and public interest. order, or prevent incitement to commit any cognizable offense in relation to the foregoing.
Committee members were concerned whether such a lockdown order would be considered a breach of the Model Code of Conduct.
There was also discussion on whether just the tweet or the entire account should be blocked, and to assess this, HT learned, members discussed whether there was any direct link between the virality of the doctored video and the Jharkhand Congress account.
The meeting also discussed the origin of the video and whether the Jharkhand Congress Party’s account should be blocked even if the party itself did not produce the video.
To be sure, X labeled the Jharkhand Congress tweets as “manipulated media”, which according to its policy is any “synthetic, manipulated or taken out of context media that may deceive or confuse people and cause harm” .
Multiple legal experts interviewed by HT agreed that MeitY’s response was disproportionate, with the ongoing election exacerbating its impact.
“The action taken here is grossly disproportionate. Deleting the tweet would have done the trick, but blocking an entire account, also that of an opposition party while an election is ongoing, spells trouble for our democratic ecosystem,” Internet Freedom Foundation Litigation consultant Radhika Roy said. Wednesday.
“If the only reason for blocking the account is that the tweet is ‘misleading’, that is not a ground under section 69A. At a minimum, this would require a threat to public order, but this has not been proven, especially when Twitter itself So, this seems to be a disproportionate response when the internal mechanisms of the US have already flagged the tweets as “manipulated media” thereby diminishing the impact on public order,” said Gautam, a lawyer and adjunct professor at Jindal Global Law School. Gautam Bhatia said.
Shah’s video, which was wrongly described as a “deepfake”, was actually edited to look as if he was saying: “When the BJP government comes to power, we will end the unconstitutional reservation for SC, ST and OBC “.
In the unedited video, he can be heard saying: “When the BJP government comes to power, we will end the unconstitutional reservation for Muslims. This is the right of SC, ST and OBC of Telangana. This right will be given to them , we will end reservation for Muslims.” No new content was added, but edits were made to change the meaning of the speech.