Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday expressed deep concern about “ongoing press censorship” in India, days after global news agency Reuters' account was 'withheld' in the country.
X's Global Government Affairs account has claimed that last week, on July 3, Indian government ordered the social media platform to block 2,355 accounts in the country, including that of Reuters “under Section 69A of the IT Act.” It added that non-compliance to the order “risked criminal liability”.
Elon Musk's X also claimed that India's IT ministry demanded that social media platform to adhere to the order “within an hour” and did not provide any “justification” for the move.
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action- within one hour- without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” the post read.
{{/usCountry}}“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action- within one hour- without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” the post read.
{{/usCountry}}The Indian government requested to unblock the accounts of Reuters and Reuters World after “public outcry”, it added.
X expressed deep concern over the move and said that it is exploring all legal options possible.
“We are deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders. X is exploring all legal options available. Unlike users located in India, X is restricted by Indian law in its ability to bring legal challenges against these executive orders. We urge affected users to pursue legal remedies through the courts," it said.
Day after Reuters' accounts were withheld in India, an official spokesperson of the IT ministry had said that there is no requirement from the government to withhold Reuters’ handle, and that they were “continuously working with X to resolve the problem.”
Some people within the ministry, who were aware of the matter, said that it seemed the accounts were withheld due to some “technical issue”.
Apart from Reuters, accounts of other international news agencies such as Turkey’s TRT World and China’s Global Times News were also not visible in India since Saturday evening. However, all the accounts were restored within 24 hours.
Indian government's response
The Indian government has denied issuing any fresh orders for blocking X accounts of Reuters on July 3 and added that as soon as the accounts were withheld in India, the government wrote to X ‘immediately’ to unblock them.
“The Government has not issued any fresh blocking order on 3rd July, 2025 and has no intention to block any prominent international News Channels including Reuters and ReutersWorld. The moment Reuters and ReutersWorld were blocked on X platform in India, immediately the government wrote to ‘X’ to unblock them. The Government continuously engaged and vigorously pursued with ‘X’ from the late night of 5th July 2025,” said an official spokesperson of the government.
It also added that X did not unblock the URLs and “un-necessarily exploited technicalities around the process”.
“However, after lot of follow up on hourly basis, X has finally unblocked Reuters and other URLs after 9 pm on 6th July 2025. They took more than 21 hours to unblock Reuters,” the statement added.