Twitter files: Politicians, journalists and farmer news handles banned

Twitter handles of members of non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties, journalists, farmer protest news handles and independent content creators were part of the 1,400-odd accounts banned by Twitter on government's request, according to an internal memo reviewed by Business Standard.

The internal list comprises 62 accounts that stand rescinded as of publishing of this report. It includes a member of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, founded by rebel BJP leader Hanuman Beniwal; a media co-ordinator of T S Singh Deo, Congress member and health minister of Chhattisgarh, and several handles that have ‘INC’ or ‘AAP’ -- purportedly short for India National Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, respectively -- in their names, but whose identities could not be independently verified.

Twitter did not respond to a Business Standard questionnarie for this story. Meity did not respond either.

Also affected is Sukhram Singh Yadav, a Rajya Sabha member from Samajwadi Party. On February 12, Yadav urged the upper house to take action against Twitter for blocking his account without giving a reason. “I had tweeted about the farm protest and therefore the account has been blocked,” he had said.

The handle of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan), a prominent farmer union, has also been taken down. BKU (Ugrahan), not part of the 31 other unions that came together in protests, recently turned heads when it demanded the release of activists such as Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Sudha Bhardwaj and Gautam Navlakha on Human Rights Day (December 10). Railways Minister Piyush Goyal had called the outfit ‘Maoist’.

Among the independent activists, Gurpreet Singh, who describes himself as ‘Artist Gurpreet from Bhatinda’ and Indi Jaswal, who claims to be based in Canada, have had their accounts blocked. The two actively published content on farmer protests and have 31,199 and 1,231,048 followers, respectively, on Facebook.

Singh and Jaswal did not respond to messages on Facebook.

At least one is a journalist. Harsh Kookna, founder of Jaipur-based digital news outlet DPK news, had his account blocked permanently. “I have been reporting from the ground-zero from Shajapur border protest site for over 80 days straight,” said Kookna on the phone, adding that he would frequently tweet opinions on protests on Twitter. In one of his tweets, he used the hashtag #ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide, he said.

The list includes Banaras Hindu University student Rajat Singh, who shot to fame in December 2019 when he publicly refused to accept the degree from the university in solidarity with anti-CAA protests in the capital at the time. The handles of The Caravan magazine and Kisan Ekta Morcha, which were banned for a few hours on January 30, were live as of publishing of this report.

On February 12, Business Standard reported that the government was content with response of Twitter, which had banned around 95 per cent of the accounts in line with its requests.

“Twitter may not block, but it has other means to curtail the reach and engagement  of your tweets,” said Md Asif Khan, a Mumbai-based businessman, who has been curating news on atrocities against Muslims on social media for over three years.

Khan has had his account blocked in a similar fashion several times before, including on January 30. “Every few months I get a mail from Twitter Legal saying that a government agency has complained that my tweets has violated some Indian laws. My account gets restored, but the engagement on my tweets, comments and likes, declines to half subsequently.”