Centre orders blocking of tweets, YouTube videos on BBC documentary on PM Modi: Sources

Both YouTube and Twitter complied with the order of the Centre which was issued after several ministry officials examined the documentary and found it to be an "attempt to cast aspersion on the authority".

Updated on: Jan 21, 2023, 15:56:33 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The Centre has ordered the blocking of YouTube videos which published the first episode of the BBC documentary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sources said adding that Twitter has also been asked to block over 50 tweets containing links to those YouTube videos. Amid controversy over the documentary which the ministry of external affairs terms a propaganda piece, senior officials of the Union home minister, external affairs ministry and the information and broadcasting ministry examined the documentary and found it to be an attempt to cast aspersions on the authority and the credibility of the Supreme Court of India.

Centre flagged over 50 tweets which had the link to the BBC documentary on PM Modi and asked Twitter to pull them down, sources said. (Reuters)

Read | Modi govt to counter biased media narratives

"The documentary was accordingly found to be undermining sovereignty and integrity of India, and having the potential to adversely impact India's friendly relations with foreign States as also public order within the country," sources said.

The information and broadcasting ministry issued the directives to YouTube and Twitter under the IT Rules, 2021. Both YouTube and Twitter have complied with the directions, say sources.

"The documentary produced by British Broadcasting Corporation, UK’s Public Broadcaster, has been earlier called by MEA as a "propaganda piece" that lacks objectivity and reflects colonial mindset. While it was not made available in India by BBC in India, some YouTube channels appear to have uploaded it to promote an anti-India agenda. It is reported that YouTube has also been instructed to block the video if it is again uploaded on its platform. Twitter has also been directed to identify and block the tweets containing the link to the video on other platforms," an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More