Letters sent by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to Twitter last month asking it to remove the "manipulated media" tags on tweets of prominent political leaders, were obtained by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) through right-to-information (RTI) requests. Neither letter cited any provision under which the government's requests were made, IFF noted. Last month, Twitter labelled tweets of BJP politicians including spokesperson Sambit Patra and others on the alleged toolkit prepared by Congress as "manipulated media." On the same day, the Delhi Police started an enquiry into the veracity of the toolkit and sent a notice to the social media platform asking it to share information that it had in this regard. It was also reported that MeitY wrote to Twitter the same day registering an objection regarding the matter and asked Twitter to remove the tags. A day later, the Delhi Police’s Special Cell visited Twitter’s office in Lado Sarai in New Delhi and in Gurgaon to serve a notice in connection to a probe into this issue. What do the letters say? The first letter dated May 21, 2021, objected to Twitter's "unilateral designation" of "tweets posted by prominent Indian leaders and social activists" as "manipulated media" while the veracity of the contents of the tweets in question was being investigated by the law enforcement agency. "Such tagging by Twitter appears prejudged, prejudiced, and a deliberate attempt to colour the investigation by local law enforcement agency," the letter stated. The move puts "a question mark on the status of Twitter…
