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Micro blogging site Twitter was close to being blocked in India following the developments in Assam and the mass exodus of North-Eastern people from different parts of the country.
An internal note seen by Business Line reveals that the Home Ministry had issued an order on August 23 to block Twitter in eight States, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.
The note stated that if the order was not complied with on the same day, the site should be blocked across the country.
The Home Ministry’s order followed an assessment by Central intelligence agencies, which had termed these eight States “sensitive”. “In case of non-compliance with this geography-specific blocking, which flows from sensitive assessment of prevailing situation, then Twitter may be blocked on all-India level,” the Home Ministry order stated.
The Home Ministry had sent this note to the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeITY) on August 23 with instructions that compliance should be reported by 6 p.m. on the same day.
The Secretary of DeITY immediately shot off a letter to the Department of Telecom (DoT) to consider the technical feasibility of the Home Ministry order.
The DoT sent the order to all major service providers, including BSNL, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications, which categorically stated that they did not have the technical capability to carry out State-specific blocking of any Web site.
“We received a call asking if we can block IP addresses on a regional basis and we said we cannot,” confirmed a senior executive from the Internet Service Providers Association of India.
And by the time DoT got the operators’ response and prepared its reply to DeITY, the crisis had blown over.
But clearly the intention was not just to block 250 Web pages for inflammatory content, as announced by the Government on August 20.
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