Woodkirk Stone
The government blocked 1,311 web links under the IT Act in 2022, parliament informed on Friday.
Of these, 1,264 links were blocked by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) and 47 links by the Department of Information and Broadcasting during the current year.
Minister of State for Electronics and Computers Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the Meity is empowered to issue instructions to block access to information by the public under Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act 2000 and rules made thereunder, namely, the Information Technology Rules (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking Access to Information for the Public ), 2009.
He said Section 69A empowers the government to give directions if it is expedient to do so in the interest of sovereignty and integrity, defense of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or to incite conscious persons offense relating to the foregoing.
“In accordance with the government’s goal of ensuring an open, safe, reliable and responsible Internet for all its users and based on requests received through Node Agents designated by various Node Agents, MeitY has blocked 1,385 , 2,799, 3,635, 9,849, 6,096 and 1,264 URLs in the year 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (till date) respectively,” Chandrasekhar said in a written response. .
He said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) also blocked 22 and 47 URLs in 2021 and 2022 (to date) respectively under the provisions of Section 69A of the Computer Act.
(Only the title and image of this report may have been edited by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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