The Indian government has asked the social media platform Twitter (TWTR.N) to reduce the number of tweets, including some by local lawmakers, who have lamented the way India handled the coronavirus outbreak, as COVID-19 cases re-emerge in the country's history.
Twitter has seized some tweets following a legal request made by the Indian government, a company spokesman told Reuters on Saturday.
The government has issued an urgent order to ban tweets, revealing Twitter in the Lumen database, a Harvard University project.
At the government's legal request, dated April 23 and disclosed to Lumen, 21 tweets were quoted. Among them were tweets from lawmaker Revnath Reddy, a West Bengal provincial minister named Moloy Ghatak and filmmaker Avinash Das.
The law cited in the government's application is the Information Technology Act, 2000.
"When we receive a formal request, we review it under the Twitter rules and local law," a Twitter spokesman said in an email.
"If the content violates Twitter rules, the content will be removed from the service. If it is determined that it is illegal in a particular area, but not in violation of the Twitter Act, we may restrict access to content in India only," he said.
A spokesman confirmed that Twitter had notified account holders directly of the reservation of their content and informed them that it had received an official letter regarding their tweets.
The development was previously reported by technical news website TechCrunch, which said Twitter was not the only platform affected by the order.
India's overcrowded hospitals demanded oxygen supplies on Saturday as coronavirus infections in the country escalated into what the Delhi high court called a "tsunami," setting a world record for the third day in a row.
India is at risk of a second wave of catastrophic floods, hitting the death toll of COVID-19 in just under four minutes in Delhi as the capital's health system is unpaid.
The national number of cases of 1.3 million people increased by 346,786, the health department said on Saturday, with 16.6 million cases. COVID-19 deaths rose by 2,624, to a total of 189,544, according to Saturday's figures.
Health experts say that India gets bored in the winter, when new cases are operating at around 10,000 a day and seemingly under control. Authorities have lifted restrictions, allowing for a resumption of major rallies, including major ceremonies and political rallies for local elections.
Posts
