The central government blocked as many as 6,454 websites, URLs, social media accounts in 2018 and 2019 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. This was revealed in a Parliamentary answer given by IT Minister of State Sanjay Dhotre to a question asked by CM Ramesh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member from Andhra Pradesh, in the Rajya Sabha. However, there seems to a mismatch with figures provided by the ministry earlier this year (more on this below). Ramesh asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) whether it was planning to formulate any policy to stop the "misuse of social media platforms". He also asked about the number of cases of misuse of social media platforms in the last two years. In his reply, Dhotre said the misuse of social media platforms and cyberspace is a global issue, and name-dropped the Information Technology Act, 2011, and the Intermediary Guidelines Rules under it. He didn't give any response on whether the government had any plan to formulate any policy on the subject. Webpages, URLs, accounts blocked under Section 69A of IT Act, 2000 (as of September 22, 2020): 2018: 2,799 2019: 3,655 Total: 6,454 Curiouser and curiouser: The case(s) of mismatched numbers Interestingly, the numbers for 2018 are different from those submitted by MEITY early this year. In March, Pratima Boumik and Sudhakar Tukaram Shrangare, both BJP members, had posed a similar question to MEITY. Dhotre had then replied that the number of URLs blocked in 2019…
