Centre refutes claims, says X took 21 hours to unblock Reuters accounts

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The government on Tuesday clarified that it had not issued any fresh order on July 3, 2025, to block any prominent international news channels, including Reuters and Reuters World, on the social media platform X and that it took 21 hours for X to unblock after its request.

 

“The government has not issued any fresh blocking order on July 3, 2025, and has no intention to block any prominent international news channels including Reuters and Reuters World,” said the official spokesperson, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

 

The clarification came after X blocked accounts of several news platforms including Reuters and Reuters World on July 5.

 

The news agency Reuters itself said in a report that X sent an email to their social media team and said, “At this time, we are no longer withholding access in India to your account.” The report further said that the email did not elaborate on the matter.

 

X's Global Government Affairs account also shared a post and claimed that last week, on July 3, the Indian government had ordered the social media platform to block 2,355 accounts in the country, including that of Reuters, “under Section 69A of the IT Act.” It added that non-compliance with the order “risked criminal liability.” 

“We are deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders,” the post further said.

 

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform further claimed that the “Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action—within one hour—without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice.”

 

In reply, the government denied the allegations and even claimed that it wrote to X moments after the accounts of Reuters and Reuters World were blocked. It further said, “X has unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn’t unblock the URLs.”

 

“After a lot of follow-up on an hourly basis, X has finally unblocked Reuters and other URLs after 9 pm on July 6, 2025,” the government said.

 

The government added that X took more than 21 hours to unblock the URLs of Reuters and Reuters World.