New Delhi: A new court submission by the Centre has shown that the home ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) had warned social media platform X to take down over 80 posts including those by Congress leaders Srinivas B.V., Supriya Shrinate and Jairam Ramesh, a day after Amit Shah’s remarks on B.R. Ambedkar had landed him in a controversy last year. The MHA also came to the rescue of Jay Shah at least twice last year, asking X to take down content “targeting” him.
These are a part of 66 government notices issued to ‘X’ over the last year. The Centre’s submission detailing the notices came as a response to a challenge filed by ‘X’ earlier this month. The social media platform is challenging the government’s use of Section 79 (safe harbour provision exempting intermediaries from liability in certain cases) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to “take down” content on the platform.
In a 90-minute reply in the Rajya Sabha debate on the ‘Glorious Journey of 75 years of the Constitution of India’ on 17 December 2024, Home Minister Amit Shah said, “It has become a fashion to say ‘Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar’. If they had taken God’s name so many times, they would have got a place in heaven.”
On 18 December, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre flagged 81 posts on Amit Shah’s speech in two notices to ‘X’. One notice listed 28 posts while another listed 53.
Pointing out that the posts were “misleading” and “taken out of context”, the notices said, “The viral video selectively clips a portion of the Home Minister’s speech, misrepresenting his statements to falsely imply that he insulted Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar … The original context of his remarks has been distorted to spread misinformation.”
ThePrint has seen these I4C notices.
The notices urged ‘X’ to remove the 81 posts “as soon as possible and in no case later than 36 hours”, with a warning—failure to remove the content “may render your platform to lose intermediary exemptions”.
However, several posts the notices flagged are yet to be removed, including Jairam Ramesh’s and the official Congress account’s posts, which called Shah’s comments “very disgusting” and demanded an apology from him.
In the case of Amit Shah’s son, one of the 14C notices flagged two posts with “fabricated images, portraying Jay Shah in a derogatory manner, alongside Kavya Maran, the owner of the Sunrisers Hyderabad IPL team”. The second notice flagged a social media account for “disseminating fake and AI-generated content/manipulated media targeting Jay Shah, Chairman of the ICC and son of Union HM Amit Shah”.
“The dissemination of such material on social media appears to be a propaganda-driven attempt by vested interests to defame and dishonour prominent office bearers and VIPs through the misuse of technology,” said the 14C notices concerned.
The I4C, according to its website, was established to provide a framework for law enforcement agencies to deal with cybercrime in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
In its legal challenge, ‘X’ called the I4C’s ‘Sahyog Portal’ a “censorship portal”, which allows central and state agencies to issue information ‘blocking orders’ under the IT Act’s Section 79(3)(b).
Section 79 of the IT Act guarantees online platforms immunity from liability for the content that third-party users post, but subclause (3)(b) of Section 79 says a platform can lose this immunity if it fails to remove any unlawful content after being notified by the government.
The Centre‘s submission before the high court, however, clarified that the Section 79 notices were not blocking orders, as the petition said, but merely “notices informing intermediaries of their due diligence obligations”. The protection under Section 79 is lifted in case of non-compliance with the notices, it added.
‘No basis in truth’
Additionally, the 14C notices flagged posts containing “derogatory remarks to demean the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs”, and an account “harming the reputations of prominent public figures”, including Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
One such notice, issued on 1 November last year, said that 14C received a complaint concerning the recent wave of Twitter posts targeting the Home Minister, with a false social media campaign alleging that Interpol had placed Amit Shah on a wanted list.
“The claim is entirely unfounded and misleading, with no basis in truth. The accounts responsible for disseminating this misinformation are primarily based in Pakistan, seemingly aiming to undermine both Shah’s and India’s reputations,” said the 14C notice concerned.
Another notice, issued on 23 October last year, referred to an edited video of Minister of State for MHA Bandi Sanjay Kumar. The 14C notice said the video had been manipulated to incorporate abusive content, and the posts appeared “designed to damage Mr Kumar’s reputation”.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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