MeitY has informed the parliament that 2,388 URLs were blocked this year under Section 69A of the IT Act. The total number of websites and webpages blocked have gone up by four times in the last four years. URLs blocked 2015: 587 blocked 2016: 964 blocked 2017: 1,329 blocked 2018: 2,388 blocked This was in response to questions by Janardan Singh Sigriwal, a BJP MP from Bihar's Maharajganj. He asked MeitY if "the government has directed any social networking media website to remove certain objectionable contents from their website?" The ministry was also asked to share the details of such requests made to these websites in the last three years and their response, along with the details of web pages blocked by the Government recently and the reasons for it. Monitoring of content on Social Media The ministry was asked about the number of individuals booked under section 66A of the IT Act in the last three years and the current year, along with the reasons. In its response, the ministry informed the Lok Sabha that the Supreme Court had struck down section 66A of IT Act 2000 in March 2015. And "as per the data maintained by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of A. 2,423 persons in 2014 and B. 3,137 persons in 2015 were arrested under combined sections of 66 & 66A of IT Act. NCRB did not maintain data separately for section 66A. The data on section 66A of IT Act is not collected by…
