Delhi: Around 27 January 2024, the website of Hindutva Watch, a US-based group documenting hate crime and hate speech against India’s religious minorities, became inaccessible in India. 

This action was preceded by a formal notice issued by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY) to the group’s founder, Raqib Hameed Naik, on 19 January, warning him that the website may be blocked.

Earlier that month, the ministry ordered X (formerly Twitter) to block access to the hate tracker’s handle in India—a directive that X obeyed, blocking Hindutva Watch on 16 January.

Naik, 29, told Article 14 that he was not aware of the grounds or reasons for blocks in both cases.

The hate tracker’s X account and its website are not accessible in India, but they remain available to Internet users abroad.

Under section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000, the MEITY has authority to order social media companies to block content in the interest of the “sovereignty, integrity, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to the above”.

There was no response to an Article 14 email to MEITY secretary S Krishnan seeking comment on the blocking of Hindutva Watch’s website and X handle. We will update this story if he does respond.

Naik said he was “shocked but not surprised” by the takedown of  Hindutva Watch’s Internet presence in India.

Hindutva Watch has archived over 3,000 news stories and 1,600 videos of minority persecution and hate speech by right-wing Hindu groups, those close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and BJP members and ministers against Muslims and other minorities, according to Naik.

For that reason, said observers, it has increasingly come under attack from supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and the BJP. Hindutva Watch is the latest of four hate-crime databases to be taken down in India since 2017, under direct or indirect government pressure.

Over the past two years, Naik said, X had informed Hindutva Watch of 26 similar legal demands from both the government of India and state law agencies—most under BJP state governments—to remove some of their posts.

“X acted on some and did not on others,” said Naik. “But these legal demands were posts-specific, not wholesale account blocking.”

“The scuttling of our platform fits the larger pattern of this government’s style of functioning,” said Naik. “It either refuses to maintain data, manipulates data, or shuts down those maintaining data.”

Modi’s government has been criticised for suppressing tweets, posts, and user accounts critical of the ruling party and its policies. It has blocked access to foreign news reports, journalists’ accounts, media websites, and investigative documentaries.

The government of India has avoided scrutiny of its censorship actions because most blocking orders are passed in secrecy, are devoid of transparency, either during the censorship process or after, in the process violating its own rules, experts said.

Current laws do not allow independent and effective appeal, they said.

Few have challenged the union government’s blocks in courts. Those who do find themselves ensnared in India’s legal complexities (here, here, and here).

Surge In Censorship Orders

Ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, India has witnessed a rise in censorship orders.

In a written response to Parliament in December 2023, the junior minister-in-charge of MEITY Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that his ministry blocked 36,838 uniform resource locators (URLs) between January 2018 and October 2023.

In 2018, it blocked 2,799 URLs while 7,502 URLs were blocked until October 2023. The maximum number of URLs were blocked in 2020 at 9,849.

X, the focal point of political conversations, saw the highest number of blocks in these 70 months—13,660.

Since billionaire Elon Musk assumed control of Twitter (now X) in October 2022, the company has increasingly complied with government requests for censorship and surveillance.

In the period between October 2022 and April 2023, tech policy outlet Rest of World reported that, according to company data, the company did not reject a single demand by government’s globally, unlike the period before Musk’s acquisition of X.

Before Musk, the company sometimes pushed back against the government’s censorship orders. In July 2021, the company even filed a lawsuit against the union government challenging an order to remove content and block accounts.

X alleged that the government had “abused its power” by ordering the removal of tweets.

The company’s pushback on some issues had invited police intimidation in May 2021, when officers of the Delhi Police—under the union home ministry—landed at Twitter’s offices in Gurugram and Delhi to serve a “notice” on them.

Indirectly referring to this incident, Musk in April 2023 publicly defended his company’s deference to government orders, saying he would “comply with laws” if the other choice was for his employees to “go to prison”.

Govt Violates Its Own Rules

The procedure for blocking Internet content is detailed in The Information Technology (Procedure and safeguards for blocking for access of information by public) Rules 2009, also known as the IT Blocking Rules 2009.

Although the rules provide some level of scrutiny before a blocking order is passed, experts told Article 14 that the union government has dodged these checks, violating its own procedures.

For instance, rule number 7 requires a committee headed by an officer appointed by the union government and consisting of representatives from the home, law, information and broadcasting ministries and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team to assess a government blocking request.

These officers should not be below the rank of joint secretary, a senior government position, the rules say.

Rule number 8 requires the committee’s chairperson to issue a notice to the originator of the allegedly “objectionable content” and provides for a hearing before the committee.

The examination committee must then give a “specific recommendation in writing” to the secretary of the department of information technology for her approval. Once approved, the chairperson can order a social media company to block access.

In emergencies, MEITY can order direct, immediate blocking of a URL but must follow the same procedure within 48 hours.

“​​These procedural safeguards are enough if followed diligently,” Radhika Roy, counsel at digital rights advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said, “But you will see in practice that they are indiscriminately abandoned.”

“Rarely are originators of content to be blocked contacted, as is mandated by Rule 8, said Roy. “It is rare for the ministry to provide a pre-decisional hearing to the originator of the content.” 

Since MEITY does not issue a notice and call for a hearing, users are unaware if and when their post or account was blocked. 

The onus usually lies on social media companies, officially called “intermediaries”, to notify users, as in Hindutva Watch’s case. However, this does not apply to websites because there is no intermediary company.

“Most of the time, it is the affected person who is forced to reach out to the ministry, that too only after their account or content is blocked,” Roy said.

The blocking rules also require a “review committee”—headed by the union cabinet secretary and consisting of the secretary of legal affairs and the secretary of the department of telecommunications—to meet at least once in two months and review MEITY’s blocking orders.

This review committee is meant to check if blocking directions issued by MEITY under these rules are legal, and, if not, overturn them.

“The composition of the review committee is highly centralised,” said Arjun Adrian D’Souza, legal counsel at Software Freedom Law Center- India, an advocacy group.

Roy agreed with D’Souza and said that the composition of the review committee “needs to change”.

“How do you expect bureaucrats who are responsible for issuing such orders to take a call on the legality?” said Roy. “This also frustrates the principles of natural justice—allowing someone to be a judge in their own cause.”

Exacerbating these problems is MEITY’s refusal to share copies of its blocking orders and review committee’s final orders. Rule 16 of the blocking rules requires the ministry to maintain “strict confidentiality… regarding all the requests and complaints received and actions taken”.

“This blanket confidentiality clause constitutes a violation of principles of natural justice and fair hearing,” said D’Souza. “Non-publication of the orders ousts awareness of the blocking order and impairs the ability to challenge it before an appellate authority or court.”

D’Souza said that such orders impinged on a person’s right to know, which flows from Article 19 of the Constitution of India. 

“More transparency can be inserted through allowing timely publication of orders and the Review Committee must provide and publish its reasons for allowing continuation of a blocking order,” said D’Souza.

The contentious confidentiality requirement is a subject matter of ongoing litigation filed by X Corp before the Karnataka High Court. On 30 June 2023, Justice Krishna Dixit held that the central government need not formally communicate reasons for a blocking order. 

Immediately after, X Corp. appealed the decision before a two-judge bench, now consisting of Acting Chief Justice Dinesh Kumar and Justice Shivashankare Gowda, arguing that if this view was upheld, the government would be “emboldened” to issue more blocking orders.

“Government can’t say review committee order upholding blocking of tweets is top secret,” senior advocate Sajjan Poovayya told the court on 29 January 2024. The court has now asked the government to clarify its stand and posted the matter for 12 February.

Not just secrecy, experts also highlight that the current law and rules do not provide for an effective appeals mechanism to challenge a block.

“At present, orders for blocking are directly challenged before the Court,” Roy said. Litigation was “expensive and cumbersome”, she said, explaining that people did not want to approach a court unless blocked content affects their livelihood.

“It is a long-drawn process without any surety of success or even resolution,” Roy said.

Not Enough Challenges 

Despite a surge in MEITY’s blocking orders, few challenge them because of three major reasons, said experts.

First, MEITY’s refusal to share a copy of its blocking order makes it difficult for a user to mount a challenge in court. “This denies an aggrieved person the opportunity to understand and challenge the order,” said D’Souza.

The second major hurdle is the lack of access, money and resources to approach courts. Lack of access to justice is a concern often highlighted, including by former Chief Justice of India N V Ramana who in July 2022 stated that a “majority of Indians are not able to approach courts” and that they “suffer in silence, lacking awareness, and necessary means”.

Third, there is a general sentiment in courts that entertaining petitions on every censor action would lead to a barrage of other similar litigations that might overwhelm them. Roy said that the solution lay not in taking away the right to be heard before courts but in laying down “stringent parameters” to issue a blocking order.

“Most blocking orders we have encountered are passed without any application of mind,” said Roy. “The vagueness in the provisions which allow blocking orders to be issued indiscriminately is what is at fault here.”

The Dowry Calculator Case

One of the only few known cases challenging a blocking order—aside from X Corp’s petition in the Karnataka High Court—is related to a satirical website called the Dowry Calculator.

In 2018, MEITY blocked the Dowry Calculator, which allowed people to calculate dowry amounts based on a variety of factors, such as skin colour, caste, alma mater and profession. 

The website, humorously dedicated to “all the match-making aunties of India”, faced controversy a few days before it was censored.

On 31 May 2018, Jyotiraditya Scindia, then a member of Parliament of the Indian National Congress now with the BJP, said on social media that such satire was “unacceptable”. He tagged the then women and child development (WCD) minister, Menaka Gandhi, urging action.

Acting on the WCD minister’s letter, MEITY blocked the Dowry Calculator in September 2018.

In December 2019, the website’s founder, Tanul Thakur, challenged this decision in the Delhi High Court, accusing MEITY of exercising its blocking powers “in a manner that fundamentally abrogates the principles of natural justice”.

On 11 May 2022, the High Court ordered MEITY to provide a copy of the ban order to Thakur and also allow him a hearing before the review committee. 

The hearing was held, as the court ordered, but MEITY continued blocking Thakur’s website. In November 2022, the Delhi High Court directed Thakur to file a fresh petition, challenging MEITY’s decision to maintain the ban.

While petitions like Thakur’s are isolated, Roy of the Internet Freedom Foundation said that alternative remedies could help ensure a faster resolution of complaints against censorship.

“A mechanism could be developed that could include persons divorced from the bureaucracy and well-versed with the subject matter,” she said.

(Saurav Das is an independent investigative journalist covering law, judiciary, and policy.)

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