Didn't ask for blocking of Reuters handle, says government as X cries 'censorship'

NEW DELHI: The blocking of Reuters and ReutersWorld handles on X has triggered a fresh war of words between the social media platform and govt, with both sides blaming each other. The matter may end up in court, X suggested.

In a post, X's global government affairs team said that on July 3, govt had ordered it to block 2,355 accounts in India, including international news outlets such as Reuters and ReutersWorld.

"Non-compliance risked criminal liability. The ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) demanded immediate action - within one hour - without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice," it said, adding that after public outcry, govt requested unblocking of the two handles.

Within a few minutes, govt refuted the allegations. "Govt has not issued any fresh blocking order on 3rd July, 2025, and has no intention to block any prominent international news channels, including Reuters and ReutersWorld. The moment Reuters and ReutersWorld were blocked on X platform in India, immediately govt wrote to X to unblock them. Govt continuously engaged and vigorously pursued with X from the late night of 5th July, 2025. X has unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn't unblock the URLs. However, after lot of follow up on hourly basis, X has finally unblocked Reuters and other URLs after 9 pm on 6th July 2025. They took more than 21 hours to unblock Reuters," a Meity spokesperson said.