Twitter quietly restored the accounts in India Monday evening (local time), more than 12 hours after it restricted them to users in the country. The company has issued no statement, but the following tweet from Pratik Sinha, co-founder of fact-checking organization Alt News, accurately summarizes today’s event.
Disproportionate action by Twitter by way of withholding dozens of accounts, and then quietly rolling it back. As usual, there will be no transparency. The other day, RW was asking for violence by asking Delhi Police to ‘lath bajao’ and Twitter slept through that peacefully.
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) February 1, 2021
A number of Twitter accounts, including those belonging to Kisan Ekta Morcha and the Caravan, were now blocked in India, apparently, after the Indian government sent a legal notice to Twitter. The accounts that have been blocked by Twitter in India include Kisan Ekta Morcha, The Caravan India, Manik Goyal, Tractor2twitr and jatt_junction. It seemed Twitter had received a legal notice to block several Twitter accounts belonging to farmers’ organisations, activists and media groups that were tweeting on framers protests against the farm bill.