Jharkhand Congress’s X account to remain blocked until polls end

The blocking committee of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) confirmed the emergency blocking order of the official X (formerly Twitter) account of Jharkhand Congress on Thursday (May 2) for tweeting the doctored video of Union home minister and Bharatiya Janata Paty (BJP) leader Amit Shah on April 28, people aware of the matter said.
The final order is a temporary blocking order under which the @INCJharkhand will not be accessible within India until the end of the elections after which the account can be restored. The account remains visible outside India.
This blocking order was requested by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the ministry of home affairs. The I4C’s threat analysis unit has been looking at the case of Shah’s doctored video.
In Thursday’s meeting, this was the only blocking order that was discussed. This is the first time Section 69A of the Information Technology Act has been used to block a political party’s social media account. This act comes amidst the ongoing general elections.
According to Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the government is empowered to block content online for six specific reasons – in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, or to prevent incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above.
There was some apprehension among committee members if such a blocking order could be seen as a violation of the Model Code of Conduct.
There was also discussion about whether only the tweet should be blocked or the entire account, and to assess that, HT has learnt, the members discussed if there was any direct correlation between the virality of the doctored video and the Jharkhand Congress account.
Discussion was also held on the origin of the video, and if the Jharkhand Congress account should be blocked even if the account did not create the video itself.
To be sure, X labelled Jharkhand Congress’s tweet as ‘Manipulated media’, which is, as per its policy, any “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm”.
Multiple legal experts HT spoke to agreed that this is a disproportionate response from MeitY, whose effect is compounded by the ongoing elections.
“The action taken here is terribly disproportional. Taking down the tweet would have fulfilled the objective but blocking an entire account, that too an account of an opposition party while the elections are underway, spells trouble for our democratic ecosystem,” Radhika Roy, litigation counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation, had said on Wednesday, after the emergency order was issued.
“If the only ground for blocking the account is that the tweet is ‘misleading’, that does not fall within the grounds specified in Section 69A. At the minimum, it would require a threat to public order but that has not been demonstrated, especially when Twitter’s own internal mechanisms had already marked the tweet as ‘manipulated media’, thereby blunting the effect on public order. This, therefore, appears to be a disproportionate response,” Gautam Bhatia, lawyer and adjunct professor at Jindal Global Law School, said.
Shah’s video has been erroneously described as a ‘deepfake’ when the video was actually edited to make it seem as if he had said, “When the BJP government will come into power, we will end the unconstitutional reservation for SC, ST and OBC”.
In the unedited video, he could be heard saying, “When the BJP government will come into power, we will end the unconstitutional reservation for Muslims. This is the right of Telangana’s SC, ST and OBC. This right will be given to them, and we will end reservations for Muslims.” No new content was added, but it was edited to change the meaning of the speech.
Polls in Jharkhand’s 14 Lok Sabha seats are yet to happen. The state will go to polls across the last four phases on May 13, May 20, May 25 and June 1.