CIC upholds denial of info on blocking of X accounts during farmers protests

The Central Information Commission recently upheld the Ministry Of Electronics & Information and Technology’s decision to decline public disclosure of information related to blocking of X (formerly Twitter) accounts that posted about the farmers' protests..“Perusal of records of the case reveals that appropriate response had been sent by the Respondent to the Appellant which is in consonance with the provisions of the RTI Act. Since the response sent by the PIO is found appropriate and well within the precincts of the RTI Act, no further intervention is warranted in this case, under the RTI Act,” Chief Information Commissioner Heeralal Samariya said in the decision dated November 29..Activist Vihar Durve had sought information about the copies of the communications made by the Centre with X for blocking of the social media accounts covering the farmers' protests and those critical of the government.He had also sought information about the alleged threat issued by the government to shut down the platform in India and conduct raids at its employees' homes in the country..Besides calling the information confidential, the Centre had also invoked the Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act to deny the information. The provision allows rejection of requests related to “information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence.”“Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000 empowers Government to block information from public access under specific conditions of: (i) interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, (ii) defence of India, (iii) security of the State, (iv) friendly relations with foreign States or (v) public order or (vi) for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence relating to above. The information, in the format as asked in the RTI is not available, further blocking of any Twitter handle/URL. has been dealt under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009 published with Section 69A of the IT Act. 2000, which is confidential in nature and cannot be disclosed,” the reply stated..With regard to the information request on alleged threat issued to X, the Public Information Officer (PIO) had answered the following,“Only such information can be supplied under the RTI Act that is available and existing and is held by the public authority or is held under the control of the public authority. The Central Public Information Officer is not supposed to create information that is not a part of the record of the public authority. The information sought is not available in records.".In 2021 and 2024, the Central government ordered blocking of hundreds of social media accounts linked to farmer’s protests. According to Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey, the Centre had gone to the extent of threatening to shut down the platform in India. The allegation was denied by the government..[Read Decision]