Hyderabad: Twitter has blocked the verified official handles of Government of Pakistan in India and Radio Pakistan, in response to a legal demand, a message read when ETV Bharat tried to access the account. It returned a message: "Account Withheld @GovtofPakistan's account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand."
A similar message was returned when we attempted to access Radio Pakistan's Twitter account. "Account Withheld @RadioPakistan's account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand," the notice said. On Wednesday, BBC's Punjabi Twitter handle was blocked in India in response to a legal demand and it was reinstated later in the day.
It is pertinent to note that the Twitter account of the Pakistan government was withheld in India in October 2022. The same happened few months before that as well in case of this handle. It is learnt on both the earlier occasions the account was able to get the blocking undone and visible in India since then.
According to the microblogging site's guidelines, such actions are taken in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order. "Twitter was compelled to withhold the entire account specified (e.g., @username) in response to a valid legal demand, such as a court order," the guidelines read.
The entire account activity is not visible to the Twitter users living in India. It maybe recalled, Twitter had blocked several official accounts of Pakistan Embassies in the United Nations, Turkey, Iran and Egypt in June last year. Later in August, India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued orders to block 8 YouTube-based news channels, including one operating from Pakistan and one Facebook account for posting "fake, anti-India content" online.
The Ministry had said the action was initiated by invoking the emergency powers under Information Technology Rules, 2021. The blocked Indian YouTube channels were observed to be using fake and sensational thumbnails, images of news anchors and logos of certain TV news channels to mislead the viewers to believe that the news was authentic, the statement had said.
