Govt denies Reuters takedown order; Elon Musk's X insists it happened

X says blocking done on government request, while the IT ministry claims no such request was made

Elon Musk’s X’s global government affairs team on Tuesday said it had blocked access to Reuters and Reuters World’s accounts on the platform, citing notices issued by the Indian government under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

 

“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,” the global government affairs team said in a post on X.

 

The information technology (IT) ministry, however, said it had “not issued any fresh blocking order on July 3, 2025” and had “no intention to block any prominent international news channels, including Reuters and Reuters World”.

 

“The moment Reuters and Reuters World were blocked on the X platform in India, the government immediately wrote to X to unblock them. The government continuously engaged and vigorously pursued the matter with X from the late night of July 5, 2025,” an official spokesperson for the IT ministry said.

 

 

The blocking of Reuters and Reuters World’s accounts was done as part of the central government’s July 3 request to block access to these two and 2,355 other accounts, the global government affairs team said in its post. The unblocking of Reuters and Reuters World’s accounts was requested by the government after “public outcry”, the post claimed.

 

The IT ministry, however, said X “unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn’t unblock the URLs (uniform resource locators)”.

 

“However, 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. They took more than 21 hours to unblock Reuters,” the spokesperson said.

In its post, X also said it was “deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders”.

 

“X is exploring all legal options available. Unlike users located in India, X is restricted by Indian law in its ability to bring legal challenges against these executive orders. We urge affected users to pursue legal remedies through the courts,” the global government affairs team said in its post.