Pakistan govt's Twitter acct. withheld in India, 2nd time in 6 months

The Pakistan government's official Twitter account with user name @GovtofPakistan has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand. This is for the second time in six months that the account has been blocked from being viewed in India.

When anyone tries to access the Twitter account of the Pakistan government, the account displayed a message stating,''Account Withheld @GovtofPakistan's account has been withheld in India in response to a legal demand.'' Meanwhile, what prompted the move is yet to be ascertained.

According to Twitter guidelines, the microblogging site takes such action against Twitter handles in case of valid legal demand, such as a court order. Currently, the Twitter feed of the Pakistan government "@GovtofPakistan" is not visible to Indian users.

However, a response from Twitter, India and Pakistan's IT ministries is still awaited.

In June last year, Twitter in India banned official accounts of Pakistan Embassies in the United Nations, Turkey, Iran and Egypt. The move may also be viewed against the Indian government's crackdown against several social media accounts including Facebook,Twitter and YouTube handles for 'spreading anti-India content' online.

In a statement issued in August last year, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said that the actions aligned with emergency powers under Information Technology Rules, 2021.

"The blocked Indian YouTube channels were observed to be using fake and sensational thumbnails, images of news anchors and logos of certain TV news channels to mislead the viewers to believe that the news was authentic," the ministry had said.