Amidst the ongoing Lok Sabha election, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology recently issued an emergency blocking order against Jharkhand’s congress X handle on Wednesday.
Why was the blocking order issued?
The reason for this action was a false viral video of Home Minister Amit Shah, shared by the Congress’s Jharkhand handle with a message suggesting that if the BJP comes into power, reservations for OBC and SC/ST will end.
In the edited video, Amit Shah was heard saying “When the BJP government comes into power, we will end the unconstitutional reservation for SC, ST, and OBC.”
But in the unedited video he is 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.”
Even though there was nothing new in the content, the meaning of the speech was changed by editing it.
This post received 483 reposts/retweets, 72 quote tweets, 885 likes, and 18 bookmarks. As of Wednesday night, the post received 81,900 views. Despite the video being labeled as ‘Manipulated media’ by Twitter (Now X).
What does the Law say?
According to Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the government has the power to block content over six prime reasons-
Affecting India’s sovereignty & integrity, India’s defence, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign state, public order, or to prevent incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above.
While blocking the content, the government has used the public order clause, to reportedly block those handles which are critical of the government.
Experts suggest that this falls under a broader definition of censorship.