Musk’s X “disagrees” with the government’s order to suspend certain accounts related to the protests by farmers

The statement claimed that X was forced by government orders to take action against certain accounts and content, with serious consequences including fines and jail time. X continues to disagree with the directions and argues that freedom of speech should extend to the material in issue, even though it has cooperated with the orders by limiting access to certain accounts and postings in India.

In accordance with its regulations, the platform has taken measures to notify impacted users of these actions. It has also filed a lawsuit to contest the government’s instructions, arguing that the lack of openness around the directives raises questions about accountability and possible arbitrariness.

On Monday, February 19, journalist and Alt News founder Muhammad Zubair went to X and asked the government to unblock the accounts. Zubair emphasized that a number of prominent accounts covering the Farmers’ Protest in India and critical of the BJP administration had been removed or suspended. He requested for the reinstatement of nine accounts that had been banned and gave a list of them.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology approved emergency banning orders on 177 social media accounts and links relevant to the farmers’ protests on Tuesday, February 20, according to The Hindustan Times. This was done in order to ensure “public order.” 35 Facebook links, 35 Facebook profiles, 14 Instagram accounts, 42 X handles, and one each from Reddit and Snapchat were among the orders that were blocked.

At the meeting of the Section 69A blocking committee, representatives from Meta (previously Facebook, Inc.) and X argued that certain URLs containing the controversial material should be restricted rather than whole accounts. In response, the committee underlined that maintaining active accounts can result in the publication of information that disturbs public order.

Exactly how many social media accounts have been disabled so far is unknown because of the intricacy of the matter.