India\u2019s IT ministry has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered \u201ccountless\u201d government officials to execute such orders, Elon Musk\u2019s X has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit and the allegations mark an escalation in an ongoing legal dispute between X and Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government over how New Delhi orders content to be taken down. It also comes as Musk is getting closer to launching his other key ventures Starlink and Tesla in India.<\/p>\n
In the new court filing dated March 5, X argues India\u2019s IT Ministry is asking other departments to use a government website launched by the Ministry of Home Affairs last year to issue content-blocking orders and mandate social media companies to join the website too.<\/p>\n
This mechanism, X says, does not contain the stringent Indian legal safeguards on content removal that required such orders to be issued in cases such as harm to sovereignty or public order, and came with strict oversight of top officials.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s IT ministry redirected a Reuters\u2019 request for comment to the home affairs ministry, which did not respond.<\/p>\n
The website creates \u201can impermissible parallel mechanism\u201d that causes \u201cunrestrained censorship of information in India\u201d, X said, adding it is seeking to quash the directive.<\/p>\n
X\u2019s court papers are not public and were reported for the first time by the media on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The case was briefly heard earlier this week by a judge in the high court of southern Karnataka state but no final decision was reached. It will now be heard on March 27.<\/p>\n
In 2021, X, formerly called Twitter, was locked in a stand-off with the Indian government over non-compliance with legal orders to block certain tweets related to a farmers\u2019 protest against government policies.<\/p>\n
X later complied following public criticism by officials, but its legal challenge to the decision is continuing in Indian courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s IT ministry has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered \u201ccountless\u201d government officials to execute such orders, Elon Musk\u2019s X has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi. The lawsuit and the allegations mark an escalation in an ongoing legal dispute between X and Prime Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7141,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions\/7141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}