Contradicting a Union government statement, X (formerly Twitter) said in a statement on Tuesday (July 8, 2025) that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had indeed requested the firm to block access to the handles of newswire agency Reuters, in addition to over 2,000 other accounts.
X said it was “restricted by Indian law in its ability to bring legal challenges against these executive orders” and was “deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders”.
But, a spokesperson for the IT Ministry responded that the government has not issued any fresh blocking order on July 3, 2025, and it has no intention to block any prominent international News Channels including Reuters and ReutersWorld.
The order to block 2,355 accounts was issued on July 3, 2025, with action demanded “within one hour,” X said. In the event, the platform appeared to have only acted on the request late Saturday (July 5, 2025) evening. Among the handles blocked were @Reuters and @ReutersWorld, which curate the British newswire agency’s articles on the platform. Spokespeople for Reuters and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office did not respond to a request for comment from The Hindu at the time.
On July 3, 2025, the Indian government ordered X to block 2,355 accounts in India, including international news outlets like @Reuters and @ReutersWorld, under Section 69A of the IT Act. Non-compliance risked criminal liability. The Ministry of Electronics and Information…
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) July 8, 2025
“After public outcry, the government requested X to unblock @Reuters and @ReutersWorld,” X said.
The IT Ministry issued a statement on Sunday (July 6, 2025) afternoon saying, “There is no requirement from the Government of India to withhold Reuters handle,” and that it was “continuously working with X to resolve the problem.” Later that day, the handles were unblocked.
IT Ministry responds
“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,” a spokesperson for the IT Ministry said in a fresh statement on Tuesday (July 8, 2025) after X’s post.
“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. ‘X’ has un-necessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn’t unblock the URLs. 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.”
“Non-compliance risked criminal liability [and the orders] required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” X said.
