Government blocks 16 Twitter accounts

The government has asked internet service providers to block 16 Twitter accounts, including those belonging to opposition outfits like the BJP mouthpiece Panchajanya and Hindu fundamentalist Pravin Togadia, as it moved to remove hate content that caused the exodus of people from the North East.

The ministry's communication to ISPs follows Twitter seeking more time to block 28 pages, which allegedly contain communally sensitive material.

Bloggers, meanwhile, protested against the government directive to block the accounts of a few journalists and web pages of news organisations like Al Jazeera, UK's Daily Telegraph and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

An ET report said the Twitter accounts of two journalists -columnist Kanchan Gupta and television journalist Shiv Aroor - were also among those that have been blocked.

The other twitter accounts that have been blocked include Dosabandit (@dosabandit), Eagle Eye (@eagleeye47), Twitanic (@anilkohli54), Sangh Parivar (@sanghpariwar), Amit Paranjape (@aparanjape), Sumeet (@sumeetcj), Pravin Togadia (DrPravinTogadia), Panchajanya (@i_panchajanya), Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian), Scamsutra (@scamsutra), Ekakizunj (@ekakizunj) and redditindia (@redditindia).

This is in addition to the hundreds of blog posts and web-pages featuring user-generated content on web sites such as Facebook and Youtube.