NEW DELHI (INDIA) – India has asked Twitter Inc to take down 1,178 accounts, which according to the country, have the support from arch rival Pakistan or are being made functional by sympathisers of a separatist Sikh movement, as per two technology ministry sources on Monday.
India’s security agencies said some of the accounts were being handled from outside of the country, one of the sources said, on condition of anonymity, as the order is not public. The order had listed the Twitter accounts of some proponents of the movement for an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan.
Many of these accounts were found to be circulating and intensifying misinformation and provocative content over the ongoing farmers protests, the source added.
Twitter is yet to adhere to the government order, which was issued on February 4, the sources said.
India’s IT ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That said, Twitter did not clearly confirm or deny whether it had complied with the government’s latest order. It said it is evaluating content under its rules and local laws when it receives a legal request about potentially illegal posts.
The company said in a statement, “If the content violates Twitter’s Rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction but not in violation of the Twitter Rules, we may withhold access to the content in the location only.”
The US social media firm also said it carefully is looking into legal requests which may be looking forward to restriction of freedom of expression. It added that it takes extra care to monitor requests connected to journalists or political speech.
Its CEO Jack Dorsey was in the eye of a storm in India last week after he liked a tweet indicating the company should take into consideration of introducing a farmer protest emoji.