Over 30,000 URLs blocked by Centre in last 5 years

A total of 30,310 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) were directed to be blocked by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology between 2018 and March 15, 2023

Hyderabad: A total of 30,310 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) were directed to be blocked by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology between 2018 and March 15, 2023. These include social media URLs, accounts, channels, apps, webpages and websites.

This was informed by Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday in response to a question posed by Congress member Pradyut Bordolo about the total number of takedown requests made under Section 69A of the IT Act since 2018.

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Vaishnaw said the Committee constituted under Rule 7 and Rule 14 of the aforesaid Rules respectively, examined a total of 41,172 URLs that were received from nodal officers in various ministries, departments, States for blocking under Section 69A of the IT Act (2000), which provides power to the government to issue directions for blocking for access of information if it is necessary or expedient to do so in the interest of sovereignty and integrity, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for inciting cognizable offence relating to above.

In the last leg of the Budget Session, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said on February 8 that in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, the Union IT Ministry passed orders to block public access to 2799, 3635, 9849, 6096 and 6775 URLs respectively.

As many as 4,999 YouTube links were also blocked by the Union Government so far, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha on March 17. These include individual YouTube videos and entire channels.

Until March 10,974 social media URLs, accounts, channels, pages, apps, web pages and websites, have been blocked in 2023 under Section 69A of the IT Act.

In another written reply, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology told Rajya Sabha on February 10 said that a total of 6,775 URLs were blocked in 2022 by the Ministry under Section 69A. Most blocked URLs (3417) were on Twitter followed by Facebook (1743) in 2022.